Amazon hires first head of space policy, a former White House space national security official

Amazon has hired former White House official Peter Marquez to be its first-ever head of space policy at Amazon Web Services as the tech giant expands its presence in the space industry.

“There are many exciting things happening in the space community and this is going to be awesome,” Marquez wrote in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday.

Amazon did not respond to CNBC requests for comment on Marquez’s hiring.

Marquez was director of space policy for the White House’s National Security Council under the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In that role, he led the drafting of a U.S. space policy document that emphasized international cooperation, gave attention to the growing problem of space debris and discouraged space-based weapons development.

In the past decade, Marquez was a vice president for both Orbital Sciences, which was later acquired by Northrop Grumman, and Planetary Resources, a now-defunct asteroid mining start-up. He also was a space advisor for Netflix‘s “Space Force” comedy series.

Marquez joins AWS as Jeff Bezos’ trillion-dollar tech giant expands its influence and services in the space industry, most recently with the establishment of the AWS Aerospace and Satellite Solutions division. Additionally, Amazon in July said it plans to invest more than $10 billion into its Project Kuiper division, an ambitious network of thousands of internet satellites that is poised to compete directly with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink.

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