Live coverage: Arianespace to launch its heaviest payload to date with Amazon Leo flight

June 17, 2026 Will Robinson-Smith
Arianespace’s Ariane 64 rocket stands at the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of the launch of the Leo Europe 03 mission for Amazon Leo. Image: Arianespace

Arianespace is preparing to launch its largest and heaviest payload to date on a version of its Ariane 6 rocket that incorporates new solid rocket boosters.

The mission is designated VA269 by Arianespace and Leo Europe 03 (LE-03) by Amazon. It will send 36 Amazon Leo broadband internet satellites into low Earth orbit.

This is the third of 18 Ariane 6 flights booked by Amazon Leo to deploy its constellation and follows successful flights in February and April.

“We have both institutional and commercial clients and our main and biggest client today is Amazon. And I must say, we are very proud to work together,” said David Cavaillolès, CEO of Arianespace, during a pre-launch press briefing. “For me, it’s much more than a contract. It’s really a partnership.”

Liftoff from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is scheduled during a window that opens at 8:53 a.m. Kourou time (7:53 a.m. EDT / 1153 UTC).

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.

While all three of the Amazon Leo missions for Arianespace have used the Ariane 64 configuration of the rocket with four solid rocket boosters, the LE-03 mission will debut the upgraded version, called P160C.

Compared to the predecessor P120C design, the P160C is a meter longer and holds about 156 tons of solid propellant. That’s about 14 more tons than the P120C boosters, allowing for a 10-15 percent increase in performance for the launcher.

The P160C boosters can produce 3,800 kN of thrust each at liftoff compared to 3,700 kN of thrust from the P120C boosters. This iteration of the Ariane 64 can deliver 36 Amazon Leo satellites to orbit, four more than previously.

Cavaillolès said described this upcoming launch as a big milestone for the company.

“It’s important and we want to secure this milestone. This is our focus as of today, but of course, the story doesn’t stop there,” Cavaillolès said. “The more we launch, the better we know the launcher. We are already looking at further improvements. So we’ll do our best to keep increasing the performance of the launcher and thus the number of satellites we can carry for each launch.”

Less than 2.5 minutes after liftoff, the four P160C boosters will separate from the Ariane 6 main stage, followed by fairing jettison less than a minute later. The first and second stages will separate nearly eight minutes into flight and the Vinci engine will begin the first of two, pre-deployment burns.

The deployment sequence for the Amazon Leo satellites will begin nearly an hour-and-a-half into flight and conclude at about one hour and 51 minutes post-liftoff. The Vinci engine will then perform a de-orbit burn about two hours and 40 minutes after takeoff.

“When this mission is complete, Arianespace will have launched 100 of our satellites to date. That’s three missions in less than five months, which is just fantastic,” said Steven Metayer, vice president of Production Operations at Amazon.

“It’s just something we really count on to build that constellation out at rate across all providers.”

Building a constellation

Prior to Wednesday’s launch, Amazon has deployed 331 satellites on 12 missions by three different launch providers: Arianespace, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance.

Metayer said production of the satellites is ramping up and is exceeding the rate at which they are currently able to get them into orbit. He said Amazon is currently manufacturing “several satellites per day” at their facilities in the State of Washington.

In Florida, he said they are able to receive satellites at their payload processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and get them integrated into a dispenser in about a week.

“We’re comfortable right now running ahead of launch. We know that when these heavy lift vehicles, such as the Ariane 64 and then you add the Vulcan and New Glenn to that, we know that we’ll have quite a consumption rate demand from launches,” Metayer said. “So we’re comfortable right now building ahead of where we need to be and to make sure we never ever run out of satellites.”

Those two launchers, New Glenn and Vulcan, are both grounded for an undetermined amount of time.

For ULA, it’s Vulcan rocket has been grounded due to a problem with one of its solid rocket boosters during the USSF-87 mission in February. The timeline for concluding its anomaly investigation isn’t publicly known, but Metayer said Amazon is anticipating being able to launch its first Leo Vulcan mission “sometime in Q3, the end of Q3.”

ULA stacked its first Vulcan rocket that will carry Amazon Leo satellites inside the newly completed Vertical Integration Facility – Amazon (VIF-A) at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The rocket will roll out to the pad for a wet dress rehearsal this summer to validate ULA’s new Centaur upper stage, which the company said is optimized for low Earth orbit missions.

On the Blue Origin side of the equation, a month after recovering from an upper-stage, in-flight anomaly on its NG-3 mission, the company lost its sole launch pad in an explosion of its New Glenn rocket during a static fire test on May 28.

During an appearance at the annual VivaTech conference in Paris on Wednesday, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp reaffirmed the company’s goal of resuming launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by the end of the year.

“We brought in 400 pieces of heavy equipment, brought in construction workers that were working 24/7. And so now the pad has been cleared of all debris. It’s amazing how quickly that’s happened,” Limp said to panel moderator and former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino. “Just yesterday, we started the reconstruction. We’re going to fly this year.”

Metayer noted that the 24 launches procured using New Glenn rockets represent “less than 25 percent of our total.”

“We definitely want to see New Glenn come to service and we definitely look forward to flying on them, but they’re not the only provider,” Metayer said. “We have a diversified launch portfolio intentionally to do that and we have quite a few launches coming up on others.”

Metayer said Amazon is planning on launching about six more times this year across multiple launch vehicles. The next one after the Ariane 64 mission on Wednesday is expected to be the Leo Atlas 08 mission on July 3, which will be the final non-government launch of an Atlas 5 rocket.

He said they also have one more Ariane 64 launch scheduled this year, but didn’t specify exactly when. Here’s the current lineup of launchers procured by Amazon:

  • ULA’s Vulcan – 0/38
  • ULA’s Atlas V – 7/9 (one used for Protoflight mission)
  • Blue Origin’s New Glenn – 0/24
  • Arianespace’s Ariane 6 – 2/18
  • SpaceX’s Falcon 9 – 3/13

Metayer said the reliability of Arianespace since its debut has been important for the company as it rolls out its constellation.

“They definitely have stepped up, you know. I will say, they’re very reliable on their manifest dates, they’re very reliable and safe on their insertions in orbit,” he said. “So we definitely would continue to look forward to the next 16 launches with them on our existing contract and we see them being a player long term beyond that.”

Amazon was up against a challenging deadline with the Federal Communications Commission since it was originally required to have deployed and be operating half of its 3,232 satellite constellation by July 30, 2026.

However, earlier this month, the FCC granted a waiver requested by the tech giant, but not without some conditions attached.

“Specifically, we impose upon Amazon Leo meaningful conditions that incent the company to continue deploying satellites at a rapid clip by temporarily demoting the spectral priority of satellites launched after the relevant July 2026 milestone deadline, until and unless Amazon Leo builds those satellites at a faster pace,” wrote Jay Schwarz, the chief of the FCC’s Space Bureau. “We act today mindful of the specific record developed on Amazon Leo and in a way that will encourage rapid builds and launches.”

He added that “any authorized satellites in the Gen1 Authorization that are not deployed and operational, will temporarily lose the associated priority status granted in both the 2020 Ka/Ku-band Processing Round and the 2021 V-band Processing Round and will be reassigned to a later priority status. This loss of status will last for twenty (20) months—until March 30, 2028—or until 50% of the constellation is launched and operational, whichever occurs first.”