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

Amazon continues to expand its presence in the space industry, with the company recently hiring former White House official Peter Marquez as its first-ever head of space policy at Amazon Web Services.

“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 responds to CNBC requests for comment on Marquez’ hiring.

Marquez previously served as the director of space policy for the White House’s National Security Council for several years under both the administrations of President George W. Bush and President 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 startup. He also was a space advisor for Netflix‘ “Space Force” comedy series.

Marquez joins AWS as Jeff Bezos’ trillion dollar tech giant continues to expand 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, which is an ambitious network of thousands of internet satellites that is poised to competed directly with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink.

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