A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper Internet Network satellite is shown preparing for liftoff at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, April 28, 2025.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
Amazon The company said it now has enough satellites in orbit to be able to launch “initial service” of its Leo internet network from space later this year.
The company delivered 29 satellites into orbit on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket around 12:30 a.m. ET Thursday. The mission brings Amazon’s total satellite constellation to more than 390, “enough to support continued service beyond initial latitudes,” Chris Weber, Amazon Leo’s vice president of business and products, said in a post about X.
This is an important milestone for Amazon as the company looks to make Leo a competitor. space xStarlink in the low orbit satellite market. Amazon began offering an “enterprise preview” of Leo to some businesses in November, but has not yet rolled out the service to consumer or government customers.
Amazon’s first commercial service will likely be limited to users in certain regions. Future missions “will add coverage and capacity,” Weber said.
SpaceX launched Starlink in 2015, giving it a four-year head start on Amazon. Since then, it has acquired a constellation of approximately 10,000 satellites and more than 10 million subscribers. Amazon announced the creation of Kuiper in 2019 and later changed its name to Leo.
Amazon aims to build a constellation of about 7,700 satellites, but efforts have been slowed by a lack of rocket power. When the company requested an extension to the regulatory deployment deadline in January, it cited delays beyond its control, including a “short-term lack of availability” of the rocket. In 2022, Amazon struck a historic deal to book rocket launches with ULA, Arianespace and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, before purchasing the vehicle with SpaceX. Many of these providers have experienced launch vehicle delays.
Another setback occurred in May, when one of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets exploded on its launch pad during a high-temperature fire test, days before it was scheduled to carry an Amazon satellite. The company is currently rebuilding the pad and working to determine the cause of the anomaly.
Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the company is determined to return New Glenn to flight later this year. Newglen is a massive, partially reusable rocket aimed at competing with SpaceX’s Starship rocket that can carry heavier payloads of up to 45 tons to low Earth orbit.
Amazon announced Thursday that its next Leo mission will use ULA’s Vulcan heavy-lift rocket, which it said will carry an even larger Leo payload and help improve deployment rates.
“With hundreds of flight-ready satellites waiting at the Cape and a new purpose-built vertically integrated facility ready to support Leo Vulcan 1 and subsequent missions, we have a clear path to increase the pace of launch and deployment, allowing us to quickly expand our network coverage following initial service deployment later this year,” Melissa Verle, Leo’s director of launch systems, said in a statement.
Watch: Jeff Bezos talks about Blue Origin
