The internet satellite market continues to expand, as Amazon deploys its offering to rival the likes of Elon Musk’s Starlink and Eutelsat’s OneWeb.
Amazon announced on Monday that “United Launch Alliance (ULA) launched our second batch of Kuiper satellites at 6:54 a.m. EDT on June 23, 2025. Named KA-02 for our second Kuiper launch on an Atlas V rocket, the mission sent another 27 satellites into orbit, bringing the total number of Kuiper spacecraft launched to date to 54 satellites.”
United Launch Alliance is a joint venture from Boeing-Lockheed Martin, which since 2006 has been offering launch services for other firms.
Image credit Amazon
Project Kuiper
In late April Amazon’s KA-01 mission had successfully launched and deployed the first 27 satellites, after bad weather had delayed the launch which had been slated for earlier in that month.
Prior to that in October 2023 Amazon had launched two prototype satellites (known as Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2) on the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s then new Vulcan Centaur rocket.
But the new satellites launched in April and now in June are said to be a significant upgrade from the two prototype satellites launched two years ago.
Now Amazon confirmed that “ULA deployed the satellites at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth, at which point the Kuiper team took over command of the mission from our 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington, completing routine vehicle health checks before ultimately raising the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth.”
Growing competition
Amazon’s Project Kuiper intends to eventually deploy a constellation of 3,236 satellites, and Amazon is on something of a deadline, as it has to deploy at least half its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, by July 2026 to satisfy its agreement with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Amazon is racing to compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink which already has 7,578 satellites in orbit.
Eutelsat’s OneWeb is also a European-based competitor with over 654 satellites.