SpaceX was not one of Amazon’s original choices to fly its Project Kuiper broadband internet satellites, but Elon Musk’s company just knocked out its second launch in less than a month for the company that seeks to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.
After four days of missed launch opportunities, SpaceX was back Monday for a successful fifth try, as a Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:35 a.m. Eastern time on the KA-02 mission, carrying 24 more satellites for Amazon’s growing constellation.
The launch came after weather scrubs on Saturday at the launch site and Sunday at the booster recovery site. A pair of Thursday and Friday attempts were also called off as SpaceX took time to perform additional vehicle checks.
The first-stage booster for the mission made its first flight and will attempt a recovery landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.
The launch comes less than four weeks since SpaceX flew the first of three contracted flights for Amazon.
The majority of Amazon’s missions for what aims to be a 3,236-satellite constellation were contracted out to United Launch Alliance. ULA flew an Atlas V in 2023 with the first pair of test satellites, and has flown two more Atlas V missions this year, marking the beginning of more than 80 operational missions planned to get them all into orbit before summer 2029.
The Federal Communications Commission set a July 2026 deadline, though, when it doled out its license to Amazon for the company to have half of them in orbit. Delays to the primary launch service providers’ rockets—including ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur, Bezos’s own Blue Origin New Glenn and Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rockets—forced Amazon to seek out the assist from SpaceX.
With the 27 satellites from each Atlas V launch and the 24 each from the Falcon 9 launches, the total number of operational satellites in space has now reached 102.
ULA has six more Atlas V launches that should all fly before next summer’s deadline, but also intends to begin flying the first of its 38 contracted Vulcan Centaur launches this year as well. Vulcan has about a 45-satellite capacity, so it should be able to chip away at what would be the 1,618 needed by mid-2026.
It could be that Amazon seeks out more launch help from SpaceX or gets an updated FCC timeline if it comes up short in the next 12 months. SpaceX’s final contracted mission and the rest of the Atlas V launches would bring the total number of satellites in space to only 288, meaning Amazon would need another 1,330 to reach that halfway threshold. That means another 30 missions from either Vulcan or Amazon’s other providers.
It’s unclear when Blue Origin would fly its first of 12 New Glenn missions (with an option for 15 more), as that heavy-lift rocket has only flown once, back in January, and its second flight is set aside for a mission to send a pair of satellites to Mars for NASA. That flight won’t come until at least this fall. Arianespace’s Ariane 6, which has secured 18 launches for Amazon, has also only flown once, but a second mission is slated for later this August, just not for Amazon yet.
SpaceX will likely knock out its third launch for Amazon as soon as more satellites are prepared at Amazon’s processing facility at Kennedy Space Center. Right now, Amazon is capable of manufacturing five satellites a day at its Washington facilities. They are then shipped to Florida for final prep at the $140 million site built on land leased from Space Florida adjacent to the former space shuttle landing site.
At full capacity, the processing site can prep satellites for three launches concurrently as ULA, SpaceX and Blue Origin all fly from Cape Canaveral.
The SpaceX launch marks the 67th from all companies on the Space Coast for the year, with all but three from SpaceX. It was also the 50th among all companies from CCSFS with the other 17 from Kennedy Space Center.
ULA’s next launch, though, could come Tuesday night, on what would be its third ever for its Vulcan Centaur and first for a national security mission after the Space Force certified the new rocket following two missions flown in 2024.
The USSF-106 flight is targeting liftoff from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41 during a launch window that runs from 7:59-8:59 p.m.
2025 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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On its fifth try, SpaceX manages launch of competitor Amazon’s satellites (2025, August 11)
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