Roughly an hour past sunrise, an Atlas 5 551 rocket from United Launch Alliance took flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Onboard the rocket, flying in its most powerful configuration, were the next 27 Project Kuiper satellites from Amazon.
This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low Earth orbit constellation. ULA is targeting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 41 at 8:09 a.m. EDT (1209 UTC).
Less than two minutes after liftoff, the five GEM 63 solid rocket boosters from Northrop Grumman were jettisoned from the Atlas booster as it continued to climb uphill under the fire power of its RD-180 engine.
The 27 Project Kuiper satellites will be deployed at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. Control will shift over to the Project Kuiper team at their 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. The separation sequence began about 20 minutes after liftoff, concluding about 15 minutes later.
From there, they will confirm satellite health, and eventually raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth. With this deployment, Amazon now has 129 satellites in low Earth orbit.
The launch comes as Amazon continues to make deals with future users of its budding constellation. Earlier this month, the company announced Jet Blue as its first airline partner with service beginning on its planes in 2027.
According to reporting by Sat News, during World Space Business Week, Ricky Freeman, president of Project Kuiper Government Solutions, said that Amazon anticipates having more than 200 satellites in orbit by the end of 2025.
Amazon has one more launch booked on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and five more with ULA’s Atlas 5 rockets. That’s on top of 38 flights with ULA’s Vulcan rocket, 18 with Arianespace’s Ariane 6 and 12-27 flights on Blue Origin’s New Glenn.
ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno previously noted that Vulcan can launch up to 45 Kuiper satellites in one flight and anticipated launching at least one Kuiper Vulcan mission this year. Amazon could reach its 200 satellite goal with a combination of either two Atlas 5 rockets and a Falcon 9 or a combination of an Atlas 5, a Falcon 9 and a Vulcan launch.
Amazon said on Sept. 12 that it had more than 80 Kuiper satellites at its Payload Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Freeman also said during his address to the WSBW crowd that service to Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States is expected by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
Freeman said Amazon’s goal is to establish coverage in 57 countries in 2027 and close to 100 countries before 2028 ends.
