TAMPA, Fla. — Amazon Web Services is partnering with Greece’s government on economic and technology initiatives that aim to turn the country into a regional space hub.
It is the first agreement of its kind for the cloud computing giant, which is expanding its global space presence as Amazon commits $10 billion to develop the low-Earth-orbit Project Kuiper broadband constellation.
Under a Statement of Strategic Intent agreement, AWS and Greece’s government will collaborate on promoting the country’s space economy, supporting measures to attract and train aerospace professionals.
This includes access to the AWS Activate program, which offers space and other startups tools and resources for using its cloud networking technology.
AWS is also launching a sponsorship program for Greek professionals and organizations looking to store and work with qualified space-related data, through the Registry of Open Data on AWS.
The agreement announced Aug. 2 is between AWS and two government departments: The Ministry of Digital Governance and the Ministry of Development and Investment.
In 2020, AWS signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Digital Governance to modernize government services with cloud-enabled applications.
“We are looking forward to working closely with the Ministries on these initiatives, designed to support the country’s ongoing focus on innovation in aerospace and technology,” Cameron Brooks, director of the public sector in Europe at AWS, said in a statement about its latest partnership.
“This agreement builds on our existing commitment to support Greece’s growing digital economy.”
AWS said June 10 it had picked 10 European and U.S. space startups for a four-week accelerator program, designed to boost their cloud computing and analytics capabilities.
AWS Aerospace and Satellite Solutions, created in 2020 as part of Amazon’s space industry expansion, is running the accelerator in partnership with British early-stage investor Seraphim Capital.
In 2019, Amazon introduced AWS Ground Station, which uses the cloud to control satellites and download and analyze their data.
Amazon said April 19 that more than 500 people were working on Project Kuiper, which envisages 3,236 satellites for worldwide broadband services.
The company has not said when it could start launches, but it must deploy at least half its constellation by July 2026 to comply with its regulatory license.
It recently emerged that a group of satellite experts had moved to work on the constellation from Facebook.