Spaceflight Now

It’s round two for both United Launch Alliance and its customer, Amazon. Monday, June 23, will be ULA’s second Atlas 5 launch of the year and the second batch of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites launched to date.

Monday is also the second attempt to launch this mission, dubbed Kuiper 2 by ULA, following a nitrogen purge issue connected to the rocket’s booster engine that caused a scrub on June 16 and for the rocket to be returned to the Vertical Integration Facility to address the issue.

Liftoff for the 205-foot-tall (62.5 m) rocket is currently set for 1:25 p.m. EDT (1725 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This is the opening of a 30-minute launch window.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.

On Sunday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 80 percent chance for favorable weather conditions at launch time, listing concerns only for cumulus clouds and low to moderate solar activity.

“Microwave imagery indicates an airmass of deep moisture moving into the western Atlantic and Florida Peninsula. This weak easterly wave will promote a higher storm and shower coverage across Central Florida this afternoon, but activity will continue to concentrate west of I-95 rather than at the coastline,” launch weather officers wrote. “Coastal showers will be the main watch item for the initial launch window Monday morning with the Cumulus Cloud Rule the main concern.”

Like it first did a week ago, ULA rolled its Atlas 5 rocket out from the VIF on a journey of a third of a mile to the launch pad on Saturday. Launch teams spent part of the day loading RP-1, a rocket-grade kerosene onto the rocket in preparation for launch day fueling.

The launch carries the ULA designation of AV-105 and it will be the 103rd launch of an Atlas 5 rocket. ULA refers to the mission as Atlas 5 Kuiper 2 or simply Kuiper 2.

This launch will be followed by a pair of national security missions using the company’s Vulcan rocket and then ULA plans to launch its first batch of Kuiper satellites on a Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral. Vulcan can send 45 Kuiper satellites into LEO as opposed to the 27 that an Atlas 5 rocket can support.

Following Monday’s planned launch, ULA will have six more Atlas 5 rockets that have been purchased by Amazon to fly satellites for its constellation. The tech giant procured nine in total, but the first was used on a dedicated mission solely for the demonstration Kuiper satellites in a mission dubbed Protoflight.

Creating a cadence

Amazon is up against a regulatory clock to get its satellites on orbit and in a functioning constellation. It has a requirement from its agreement with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to get at least half of its planned first-generation constellation of more than 3,200 satellites in operation by the end of July 2026.

In addition to the remaining Atlas 5 rockets at its disposal, Amazon also purchased 38 Vulcan rockets, 18 Ariane 6 rockets, 12 New Glenn rockets (with the option to add another 15) and three Falcon 9 rockets from ULA, Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX respectively.

When it announced the purchase of the Falcon 9 flights from SpaceX, Amazon said in December 2023 that it would begin launching on this rocket in mid-2025. Since then, Amazon has not commented on whether or not it is still on pace with satellite production or delivery to meet that timeline.

Both Blue Origin and Arianespace have not discussed their launch manifests extensively in a public setting, but both companies are aiming for their next launches in the August timeframe and neither will be with Project Kuiper satellites on board. It remains unclear when the first Kuiper launch will take place with those rockets.

Take a look at this @ULAlaunch clip of the first Kuiper satellites being released into low Earth orbit approximately 280 miles above the planet. Deployment takes place over a 15-minute period after launch, with satellites released three at a time from the dispenser system. pic.twitter.com/bZ1zUy3IWs

— Project Kuiper (@ProjectKuiper) May 2, 2025

It created a new page on its website on June 10, 2025, that it said contains “updates on recent and upcoming Project Kuiper missions.” As of June 15, the page didn’t include references to any other launches beyond what it designated as KA-02 and the previously launched KA-01, which lifted off on April 28.

“ULA will deploy the satellites at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth, at which point the Project Kuiper team will take over command of the mission from our 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington, confirm satellite health, and ultimately raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth,” Amazon wrote regarding the upcoming launch.

This second flight for Amazon will bring its constellation up to 54 satellites in total out of the more than 1,600 it needs in just a little more than a year’s time. In a post on LinkedIn, Rajeev Badyal, the vice president of Technology at Project Kuiper said April’s launch made him optimistic about the direction of the company.

“The success of our first full-scale Kuiper mission in April meant we could move immediately to our next launch,” Badyal wrote. “All 27 satellites for our KA-02 mission were fully integrated within 17 days of that first launch, and ULA plans to send them into orbit next Monday. Thanks to the entire team for the quick turnaround. Go Kuiper. Go Atlas. Go KA-02!”

A key test for Amazon will be how quickly it can get back to the pad with its satellites, whichever rocket will be ready to fly them.

Update June 22, 2:17 p.m. EDT: SpaceX delayed the launch 24 hours due to poor weather.

SpaceX is preparing for its fourth launch of the year as part of its dedicated smallsat rideshare program, which is set to liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Monday. SpaceX said it was unable to launch on Sunday due to poor weather.

The mission, dubbed Transporter-14, will send 70 customer payloads into a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East is anticipated at at 2:18 p.m. PDT (5:18, p.m. EDT, 2118 UTC).

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

In its announcement of this mission on Friday, SpaceX noted that it would be “keeping an eye on weather” as the planned launch approaches.

SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1071, which will fly for a 26th time. It previously launched five missions for the National Reconnaissance Office, three of SpaceX’s rideshare missions and NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft.

About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1071 will target a landing on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, this will be the 138th booster landing for this vessel and the 466th Falcon landing for SpaceX.

Back again

Among the dozens of companies with their logos and spacecraft surrounding the deployment mechanisms on the Falcon 9 rocket is Berlin-based Exolaunch. The company, which helps manifest spacecraft onto these missions for its customers, has been a part of every Transporter mission to date as well as the Bandwagon missions, which head to mid-inclination orbits.

Exoluanch CEO Robert Sproles described SpaceX’s smallsat rideshare program as “industry enabling” and something “that our customers depend on, that we are very proud to support.”

“It gives an opportunity to really pressure test not only our hardware, but all of our systems and missions management to make this a very smooth process for our customers so that they have a really easy time,” Sproles said.

Transporter-14 represents the single, biggest mission for Exolaunch, which is managing 45 of the 70 payloads onboard. Those come from 25 customers from around the word, like Space Forge in the United Kingdom, Gilmour Space in Australia and Unseen Labs in France among others.

“When you have that many payloads on a mission, everything has to work like clockwork. So there’s a tremendous amount of prep work that goes into preparing for the launch campaign,” Sproles said. “Not that anybody does approach these with a laissez-faire attitude, but you cannot approach a Transporter mission without thinking through every activity and how you will accomplish this efficiently on site.”

Sproles said while there are some variations depending on the customer, typically two of the most important marker on the road to a mission are eight and four months away from launch day.

“L-8 months is one very, very big deadline where a lot of deliverables and configurations are due. So ideally, the customer has told us that they want the mission and that they will be ready for the mission by L-8 months,” Sproles said. “That doesn’t mean that’s the absolute latest. We are able to get customers on later than that. There’s usually less flexibility when that happens.”

He said four months from a mission launch it’s “rare” to be able to bring on a new payload for the mission, calling it a “worst case” scenario to try and join a mission.

Exolaunch’s most used product is its EXOpod, which has been a part of 29 missions and deployed 360 CubeSats to date. Other flight-proven deployment mechanisms include the CarboNIX, the EXOport and the Quadro Arrow.

The EXOpod is the simplest way to work with a CubeSat, since those are variations on a uniform spacecraft, just made up of multiple units, which are 10 cm cubed each.

Other more bespoke kinds of satellites that require a different separation system will result in a conversation between Exolaunch and the customer as to what makes the most sense for that satellite and the mission.

“Once, with the customer, we have down selected to the right separation system, we then take that to SpaceX and say, ‘Here is the interface that we would like to fly and here is the volume that we would like to purchase,” Sproles said. “So, we’ll purchase the capacity on volume and each volume comes with a mass allocation in it and then we’ll manage that, along with the customer.”

In May, Exolaunch announced a new, multi-year contract with SpaceX to extend its access to Transporter and other rideshare missions out through 2028. In its statement, Exolaunch said that will allow it access to not only SSO missions, but also mid-inclination, near-polar and dawn-dusk orbits as well.

“It gives our customers confidence and trust that when they put in not just the effort, but the funds to build their satellite, that they will have a reliable ride to orbit,” Sproles said. “Often, launch is one of the most expensive portions of their programs, but also time-to-revenue is what is important to the customer… Having these contracts locked in allows us to say to customers, ‘When you are ready, the launch will be there.’”

While this deal is expressly for future missions on the Falcon family of rockets, Sproles said Exolaunch is also in early talks with SpaceX about being a part of future commercial launches of its Starship rocket.

“Yes, absolutely. That’s a conversation we are engaged with them on,” Sproles said, adding that he couldn’t go into details like projected timelines or specific access to Starship. “Definitely, we’re in those conversations. Excited about them. Really excited to support future, commercial Starship launches.”

Sproles said with 16 launches remaining on their manifest for 2025, including Transporter-15, they have a busy year ahead for a company of roughly 70 people spread across multiple, international offices.

Last up, up top

Images of the fully integrated payload stack for the Transporter-14 mission show one spacecraft literally above all others. On its website, SpaceX refers to this position as the “Cake Topper” and it comes with a dedicated user’s guide, which was most recently updated in December 2024.

“[SpaceX] is pleased to offer a unique solution for small-to-medium-class spacecraft up to 2500 kg that wish to launch in a forward-mounted orientation,” the user’s guide states. “This offering combines the schedule assurances of the Rideshare Program with many of the capabilities of primary, dedicated missions.”

SpaceX states that the Cake Topper has a typical timeline of one to two years from contract to launch.

The Cake Topper for Transporter-14 is the Mission Possible capsule from The Exploration Company (TEC). It will be the last payload deployed, releasing nearly 2 hours and 45 minutes after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

It’s the second development mission for the Germany-based company, which aims to create a cargo transport vehicle, called Nyx Earth. It also has plans to create a crewed variation of Nyx Earth in the future as well as a lunar variant, called Nyx Moon.

In a post on its LinkedIn page, TEC said the capsule took about three years to develop, manufacture and test for a cost of about €35 million (~$40 million).

TEC said this will be the third controlled reentry vehicle developed in Europe to date, preceded by the Advanced Reentry Demonstrator in 1998 and the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle in 2015, which were both developed by the European Space Agency.

The launch of the Mission Possible capsule comes after its first spacecraft, dubbed Mission Bikini, launched as a payload onboard the inaugural launch of an Ariane 6 rocket in July 2024. However, an upper stage failure prevented that capsule from performing its reentry demonstration.

Mission Possible, weighing in at 1.6 tons with a max diameter of 2.5 meters (8.2 ft), carries with it 25 payloads. It’s designed to perform tests through five “critical phases” of the mission, according to TEC:

• In-orbit payload activation
• Separation from the launch vehicle
• Attitude control
• Atmospheric reentry
• Splashdown with ocean recovery

TEC said it’s using parachutes from the company Airborne Systems, which were previously used on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. As part of their method to reduce costs on this mission, a drop test using the parachutes was not performed.

It also decided to use commercial off-the-shelf components for the Mission Possible flight computer as well as opt for no redundancy on critical subsystems, like relying on one parachute and only having one onboard computer.

“We are aware this model means more risks of failure, but it allows for lower costs, faster development, and a deeper understanding of the vehicles and their systems over time,” TEC wrote on LinkedIn. “We aim to learn quickly by building fast, flying early and improving with each iteration.”

Update June 22, 2:38 a.m. EDT: SpaceX scrubbed the mission due to an issue with the flight termination system; confirms new launch time.

SpaceX was less than two minutes away from the launch its 260th orbital flight from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station when it called an abort. The SpaceX launch director said there was a poor signal coming from the flight termination system on the Falcon 9 rocket.

When it launches, the mission, dubbed Starlink 10-23, will add another 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to the company’s low Earth orbit constellation. SpaceX is now targeting Monday, June 23, at 1:29 a.m. EDT (0529 UTC) for its next launch attempt.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.

The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 95 percent chance for favorable weather during Sunday’s launch window.

SpaceX will use the first stage booster, tail number B1069, to launch the mission, which will fly for a 25th time. Some of its previous missions include CRS-24, Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13F and 20 batches of Starlink satellites.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1069 will target a landing on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ If successful, this will be the 114th touchdown for this vessel and the 465th booster landing to date.

The Starlink 10-23 mission will be SpaceX’s 57th Starlink launch of the year out of a total of 76 Falcon 9 flights. The company aims to launch 170 Falcon rockets by the end of 2025.

Update June 19, 10:51 p.m. EDT: Adding statements from SpaceX and Elon Musk.

SpaceX’s next Starship vehicle was destroyed in a catastrophic explosion shortly after 11 p.m. CT (0400 UTC) Wednesday as it was being readied for a static fire test at the company’s Massey facility, near Starbase, Texas.

The bullet-shaped, stainless-steel Ship 36 was ripped apart in a giant fireball as liquid methane and liquid oxygen were being loaded for an expected test firing of the vehicle’s six Raptor rocket engines. It was unclear how much damage was inflicted to the test stand and other facilities at the Massey site.

“The Starship preparing for the tenth flight test experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase,” SpaceX said in a social media post. “A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for. Our Starbase team is actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials.”

SpaceX said there were no hazards to residents in nearby communities but urged people to stay away while it worked to safe the test site.

Later in the day, the company issued another statement, this time to its website, where it said the preliminary analysis indicated “the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing.”

“There is no commonality between the COPVs used on Starship and SpaceX’s Falcon rockets,” SpaceX said.

SpaceX Founder Elon Musk posted similar comments to his account on X, adding that, “If further investigation confirms this is what happened, it is the first time ever for this design.”

Airspace warnings, issued by the Federal Aviation Administration prior to Wednesday’s failure, suggested SpaceX was targeting June 29 for the tenth test flight of the full Starship vehicle with its Super Heavy Booster first stage.

SpaceX had performed a single-engine test fire for Ship 36 on June 16 and fired up the 33 Raptor engines of the Super Heavy Booster for the mission on June 6.

The dramatic failure follows three unsuccessful test flights of the Starship upper stage earlier this year. Flights 7 and 8 both ended with an explosion of the Ship upper stage during the climb to space. After a successful ascent on Flight 9 on May 27, the Starship upper stage suffered a loss of attitude control and was destroyed during reentry without accomplishing most of the planned in-space test activities.

Starship plays a vital role in NASA’s Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. The Human Landing System variant of Starship is supposed to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface on the Artemis 3 mission, currently scheduled for 2027.

Musk has touted Starship for the colonization of Mars, and in a recent presentation, he suggested the craft could make multiple flights to the Red Planet as soon as 2026.

Firefly Aerospace is preparing for its next mission to the Moon and it hopes to, once again, make history, but this time, even before it reaches the lunar surface.

On Wednesday, the company unveiled what it calls Ocula, a lunar imaging service, which will capture high-resolution imagery of the Moon. Firefly Aerospace said it will become the first company to offer this type of capability in lunar orbit from a commercial provider.

“It was always a thought, even before the Blue Ghost Mission 1 landing, that getting more imagery of the lunar surface, as well as looking for previous minerals or understanding activity on the Moon or even looking away from the Moon’s surface and doing space domain awareness, those were all things that we were always exploring,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace.

“So, we had an idea that something like Ocula would be beneficial to NASA, the science, the commercial and the national security missions out there, but having this orbiter that’s going to fly tandem with the Blue Ghost 2 lunar lander, afforded an opportunity to actually make this happen.”

Like many parts of Firefly Aerospace’s hardware and software, this new imaging service also pays homage to the movie Serenity, a sequel to the sci-fi series, Firefly. Ocula is the name of one type of spaceship in the film.

“I think Ocula is just a great name for a mission as game-changing as this. It’s a great coincidence that it has a lineage there, but you know, it’s fitting for the mission that we’re doing,” Kim said. “It’s the first of a kind. It’s going to be the first commercial mission to do this imaging and mapping and space domain awareness around the Moon.

“It’s a cool name, so I hope it catches on and more and more people find out about it.”

Unlike Blue Ghost Mission 1, which landed on the Earth-facing side of the Moon in early March, Blue Ghost Mission 2 will perform a landing on the far side. Prior to its landing attempt, it will deploy the Elytra spacecraft with Ocula onboard.

“I think the purpose of this first Ocula mission is to provide an affordable means to be a ride share, to demonstrate the feasibility of this mission and the capabilities of this mission,” Kim said. “We’re going to learn a lot from actually performing this mission and we’re going to have another opportunity with Blue Ghost 3 as well. That will have a tandem orbiter as well.”

Ocula’s telescope is able to capture up to 0.2-meter resolution of the surface of the Moon at an altitude of 50 km (31 mi). Kim said Firefly will announce more details, like the planned operating orbit for Elytra and Ocula’s first mission in the coming months.

Kim said the goal is to develop a constellation in lunar orbit that can offer a high revisit rate to a variety of parties. He said that Firetly is “getting a lot of demand/interest” in accessing the data that will be gathered by Ocula, but said they’re not ready to announce potential customers at this time.

“Between understanding the demand and understanding the physics of orbiting and operating around the Moon and looking at different geographic features of the lunar surface and really groundbreaking and opening up new categories with this mission, we’re going to be able to formulate what the future constellation is going to look like,” Kim said.

Firefly Aerospace is developing the Ocula technology in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Kim said that came in part from a long-standing relationship.

“I think they do a lot of important things for the Department of Energy for our nation. A while back they were able to develop a very compact, high-performance imaging sensor and they’ve, over the years, upgraded it and developed flight versions of it and flown versions of it,” Kim said.

“They’ve got a lot of flight heritage and they continue to tech refresh that capability.”

In addition to Blue Ghost Mission 2, Firefly plans to fly Ocula on the Elytra 3 vehicle, which will be in support of a Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) Sinequone Project no earlier than 2027. That will be a responsive space domain awareness mission.

Blue Ghost Mission 2 meanwhile is targeting a launch in 2026. The mission passed its critical design review in 2024 and teams are now in the process of integration and testing.

“We’re really excited about all the great mission capabilities that are going to be part of that mission. Not only just the Ocula mission, but going to the far side of the Moon and being able to do the LuSEE-Night mission and look at signals from millions of years ago,” Kim said. “That’s going to be very exciting for us. And as you know, we also are carrying a rover on that mission as well that we announced a couple months ago.”

And as Firefly Aerospace continues to develop and deploy the various versions of its Elytra spacecraft, referred to as Dawn, Dusk and Dark, Kim said they’re also looking towards the possibility of deploying the Ocula technology in future Mars exploration missions as well.

“[Elytra] is able to host a lot of different, diverse payloads and its got a lot of size, weight and power accommodations for that. So, it’s kind of a perfect mix of not too small, not too large of a spacecraft, but able to carry a lot of fuel to do a lot of different delta V, intensive, dynamic space operations and it can hold a lot of different mission payloads as well,” Kim said.

“So that’s a long way of saying if there’s a need from NASA or other customers for orbiting Mars and imaging it or providing long haul communications, really Elytra is a perfect system and platform to perform that kind of mission.”

Update June 18, 3:15 a.m. EDT: SpaceX confirms deployment of the 28 Starlink satellites.

SpaceX completed its 75th Falcon 9 rocket launch of the year with a mission that blasted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the predawn hours of Wednesday. The mission, dubbed Starlink 10-18, included the 9,000th Starlink satellite launched to low Earth orbit to date.

The Falcon 9 rocket took a north-easterly trajectory following liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at 1:55 a.m. EDT (0555 UTC).

The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a greater than 95 percent chance of favorable weather at liftoff. Meteorologists said possible evening showers should dissipate ahead of the opening of the launch window.

SpaceX used the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1090 to launch the Starlink 10-18 mission. This was its fifth trip to space and back following the launches of SES’ O3b mPOWER 7&8, NASA’S Crew-10, Bandwagon-3 and Starlink 6-67.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1090 landed on the droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions.’ This marked the 125th landing on this vessel and the 464th booster landing to date.

With the deployment of the 28 Starlink satellites, SpaceX has now launched 9,003 Starlink satellites to date. The company launched more than 1,300 in 2025 alone up to this point.

According to the latest stats compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an expert orbital tracker and astronomer, there are currently about 7,800 Starlink satellites remaining in low Earth orbit.

Update June 17, 1:35 a.m. EDT: SpaceX confirmed deployment of the Starlink satellites.

SpaceX launched its latest batch of 26 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit shortly after sunset Monday night, offering a twilight spectacle for launch enthusiasts across Southern California and the Southwest.

The mission, dubbed Starlink 15-9, was the 200th orbital launch to date from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Station. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket happened at 8:36 p.m. PDT (11:36 p.m. EDT, 0336 UTC).

SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 rocket booster tail number B1093, which will make its third flight. It previously launched the Starlink 11-11 and Starlink 15-5 missions.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1093 landed on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ This was the 137th touchdown on this vessel and the 463rd booster landing to date.

Among the 199 previous orbital launches from SLC-4E, 131 of them were Falcon 9 rockets. The pad was first occupied by the Atlas-Agena rocket shortly after the Air Force Western Test Range activated in May 1964.

It would go on to launch multiple variants of the Titan rocket until October 2005.

SpaceX is currently going through the review process for acquiring SLC-6 as well to use for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

Update June 16, 1 p.m. EDT: ULA scrubbed the mission due to a temperature issue connected to the RD-180 engine on the booster.

United Launch Alliance and its customer, Amazon, will have to wait longer for the second launch of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites following a scrub Monday afternoon.

During the countdown, ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno noted in a post on BlueSky that teams were “working a temperature measurement (that was) warmer than previous family,” meaning compared to other Atlas 5 launches.

ULA called the scrub shortly before 1 p.m. EDT, roughly half an hour before the planned liftoff time on Monday.

“United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 551 carrying Amazon’s second Project Kuiper mission, Kuiper 2, is delayed due to an engineering observation of an elevated purge temperature within the booster engine,” the company wrote in a statement. “The team will evaluate the hardware, and we will release a new launch date when available.”

Fueling for the 205-foot-tall (62.5 m) rocket had concluded before the scrub call. Bruno said in another post to BlueSky that the issue with the gaseous nitrogen couldn’t be fixed within their available launch window.

“We’ll sort it out and be back,” Bruno said. It’s unclear if ULA will be able to make the fixes at the pad or if teams will need to return the rocket to the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) about a third of a mile from the pad to do the necessary work.

On Sunday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 75 percent chance for favorable weather conditions at launch time, listing concerns only for cumulus clouds and low to moderate solar activity.

“Surface high pressure to the east will maintain southeasterly flow across the Spaceport during the primary and back-up launch opportunities,” launch weather officers wrote. “In this regime, showers and thunderstorms can begin to develop across the region in the early afternoon. However, high pressure aloft and dry air near the region may help limit shower and thunderstorm development early in the week.”

A launch readiness review held on Friday, June 13, and overseen by ULA Launch Director James Whelan, culminated in a ‘go’ for the launch campaign to proceed. Weather conditions improved slightly since Friday’s outlook as well.

ULA rolled its Atlas 5 rocket out from the VIF on a journey of a third of a mile to the launch pad on Saturday. Launch teams spent part of the day loading RP-1, a rocket-grade kerosene onto the rocket in preparation for launch day fueling.

The rocket carries the ULA designation of AV-105 and it will be the 103rd launch of an Atlas 5 rocket. ULA refers to the mission as Atlas 5 Kuiper 2 or simply Kuiper 2.

This launch will be followed later this summer by a pair of national security missions using the company’s Vulcan rocket and then ULA plans to launch its first batch of Kuiper satellites on a Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral. Vulcan can send 45 Kuiper satellites into LEO as opposed to the 27 that an Atlas 5 rocket can support.

Following Monday’s planned launch, ULA will have six more Atlas 5 rockets that have been purchased by Amazon to fly satellites for its constellation. The tech giant procured nine in total, but one of those was used on a dedicated mission solely for the demonstration Kuiper satellites, dubbed Protoflight.

Creating a cadence

Amazon is up against a regulatory clock to get its satellites on orbit and in a functioning constellation. It has a requirement from its agreement with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to get at least half of its planned first-generation constellation of more than 3,200 satellites in operation by the end of July 2026.

In addition to the remaining Atlas 5 rockets at its disposal, Amazon also purchased 38 Vulcan rockets, 18 Ariane 6 rockets, 12 New Glenn rockets (with the option to add another 15) and three Falcon 9 rockets from ULA, Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX respectively.

When it announced the purchase of the Falcon 9 flights from SpaceX, Amazon said in December 2023 that it would begin launching on this rocket in mid-2025. Since then, Amazon has not commented on whether or not it is still on pace with satellite production or delivery to meet that timeline.

Both Blue Origin and Arianespace have not discussed their launch manifests extensively in a public setting, but both companies are aiming for their next launches in the August timeframe and neither will be with Project Kuiper satellites on board. It remains unclear when the first Kuiper launch will take place with those rockets.

Take a look at this @ULAlaunch clip of the first Kuiper satellites being released into low Earth orbit approximately 280 miles above the planet. Deployment takes place over a 15-minute period after launch, with satellites released three at a time from the dispenser system. pic.twitter.com/bZ1zUy3IWs

— Project Kuiper (@ProjectKuiper) May 2, 2025

It created a new page on its website on June 10, 2025, that it said contains “updates on recent and upcoming Project Kuiper missions.” As of June 15, the page didn’t include references to any other launches beyond what it designated as KA-02 and the previously launched KA-01, which lifted off on April 28.

“ULA will deploy the satellites at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth, at which point the Project Kuiper team will take over command of the mission from our 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington, confirm satellite health, and ultimately raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth,” Amazon wrote regarding the upcoming launch.

This second flight for Amazon will bring its constellation up to 54 satellites in total out of the more than 1,600 it needs in just a little more than a year’s time. In a post on LinkedIn, Rajeev Badyal, the vice president of Technology at Project Kuiper said April’s launch made him optimistic about the direction of the company.

“The success of our first full-scale Kuiper mission in April meant we could move immediately to our next launch,” Badyal wrote. “All 27 satellites for our KA-02 mission were fully integrated within 17 days of that first launch, and ULA plans to send them into orbit next Monday. Thanks to the entire team for the quick turnaround. Go Kuiper. Go Atlas. Go KA-02!”

A key test for Amazon will be how quickly it can get back to the pad with its satellites, whichever rocket will be ready to fly them.

Update 12:26 p.m. EDT: SpaceX confirmed the landing of its Falcon 9 booster on its droneship.

SpaceX launched its 490th Falcon 9 rocket Friday morning, which carried a batch of 23 of its Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit.

The mission, dubbed Starlink 12-26, launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The rocket lifted off at 11:29 a.m. EDT (1529 UTC).

The 45th Weather Squadron forecast an 85 percent chance of favorable weather at the opening  of the original, four-hour launch window, which opened at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 UTC). However, conditions drop to 60 percent favorable towards the end of the window.

“The Atlantic ridge will remain to the north of Central Florida through late week, with a continuation of low-level onshore flow,” launch weather officers wrote on Thursday. “Some decrease in column moisture through the atmosphere is noted into the weekend as another round of Saharan dust influences the local atmosphere.

“However, this regime will still support onshore-moving showers during the night and morning hours along the coast, with early daily seabreeze formation focusing more widespread shower and thunderstorm activity inland during the afternoon and evening hours.”

SpaceX used the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1078, which launched for a 21st time. Its previous flights include NASA’s Crew-6, ASTSpaceMobile’s Bluebird 1-5 and USSF-124.

It’s now tied as the fifth most flown booster by SpaceX, alongside B1076 and B1077.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1078 landed on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This marked the 113th touchdown on this vessel and the 462nd booster landing to date.

Onboard the Falcon 9 rocket are 23 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, of which 13 have direct-to-cell capabilities. To date, SpaceX has launched 661 of these DTC Starlink satellites, with 273 of them sent to low Earth orbit in 2025 so far.

SpaceX launched its latest batch of 26 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit on Thursday nightfrom Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The mission, dubbed Starlink 15-6, lifted off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 6:54 p.m. PDT (9:54 p.m. EDT, 0154 UTC).

The Falcon 9 first stage booster used for this mission is designated B1081, which was flying for a 15th time. Its previous flights included supporting NASA’s Crew-7, NASA’s PACE, ESA’s EarthCARE and two Transporter rideshare missions.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1081 landed on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 136th successful recovery on this droneship and the 461st booster landing to date.

Deployment of the 26 optimized Starlink V2 Mini satellites was confirmed just over an hour after liftoff.

SpaceX is also planning to launch another batch of Starlink satellites from Florida as early as Friday, June 13, at 11:21 a.m. EDT (1521 UTC).