United Launch Alliance (ULA) will ship one other batch of Amazon’s web satellites to orbit on Monday morning (Dec. 15), and you may watch the motion dwell — should you’re an evening owl or a really early riser.
Amazon Leo, beforehand referred to as Venture Kuiper, is Amazon’s deliberate satellite-internet megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO).
The community will finally encompass about 3,200 satellites, which can attain orbit on greater than 80 launches carried out by a wide range of rockets. Six of these missions have been accomplished up to now, lofting 153 Venture Leo satellites to the ultimate frontier. (These numbers do not rely a take a look at mission that carried two prototype satellites to LEO in October 2023.)
Monday’s launch would be the fourth Venture Leo mission for the Atlas V, a venerable and extremely reliable rocket that debuted in August 2002. ULA is phasing out the Atlas V in favor of a brand new car known as Vulcan Centaur, which has three missions beneath its belt up to now.
When it is up and operating, Venture Leo will beam web connectitvity right down to individuals across the globe. It is going to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation, which already offers service to prospects utilizing greater than 9,000 satellites in LEO. And that quantity is rising on a regular basis; SpaceX has launched greater than 3,000 Starlink satellites to this point in 2025 alone.
Curiously, SpaceX helps to construct out the Venture Leo community; its Falcon 9 is among the many rockets that Amazon has tapped to launch the megaconstellation, together with Arianespace’s Ariane 6, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur.
