Video: Weather causes Atlas 5 countdown hold

Hurricane Matthew slammed NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, home to multiple launch pads and spacecraft assembly facilities, with wind gusts of more than 100 mph early Friday, but there were no immediate reports of significant damage at the spaceport as the storm passed just offshore.

Amazon has selected United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket for nine missions from Cape Canaveral to deploy satellites for the Kuiper internet constellation, a fleet designed to eventually number more than 3,200 spacecraft, the companies announced Monday.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launched at 5:02 p.m. EST (2202 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral with NOAA’s GOES-S weather satellite, the second in a series of upgraded observatories destined to cover the western United States and the Pacific Ocean.