A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is proven on its launch pad carrying Amazon’s Mission Kuiper web community satellites because the automobile is ready for launch on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 28, 2025.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
United Launch Alliance on Monday was compelled to delay the second flight carrying a batch of Amazon‘s Mission Kuiper web satellites due to an issue with the rocket booster.
With roughly half-hour left within the countdown, ULA introduced it was scrubbing the launch resulting from a difficulty with “an elevated purge temperature” inside its Atlas V rocket’s booster engine. The corporate mentioned it is going to present a brand new launch date at a later level.
“Doable situation with a GN2 purge line that can’t be resolved contained in the rely,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno mentioned in a submit on Bluesky. “We might want to stand down for right now. We’ll kind it and be again.”
The launch from Florida’s Area Coast had been set for final Friday, however was rescheduled to Monday at 1:25 p.m. ET resulting from inclement climate.
Amazon in April efficiently despatched up 27 Kuiper web satellites into low Earth orbit, a area of area that is inside 1,200 miles of the Earth’s floor. The second voyage will ship “one other 27 satellites into orbit, bringing our whole constellation dimension to 54 satellites,” Amazon mentioned in a weblog submit.
Kuiper is the most recent entrant within the burgeoning satellite tv for pc web trade, which goals to beam high-speed web to the bottom from orbit. The trade is at present dominated by Elon Musk’s Area X, which operates Starlink. Different opponents embrace SoftBank-backed OneWeb and Viasat.
Amazon is concentrating on a constellation of greater than 3,000 satellites. The corporate has to satisfy a Federal Communications Fee deadline to launch half of its whole constellation, or 1,618 satellites, by July 2026.
