Amazon changes its satellite launch vehicle for September

Amazon changed the prototype internet satellite launch to Atlas V rocket, targeting September 26 launch. In order to minimise delays, the corporation changed rides once more from the Vulcan rocket. By the legal deadline of 2026, Amazon planned to launch satellites for their Kuiper internet network, which would compete with SpaceX's Starlink. The action represented the greatest commercial launch procurement and an investment of $10 billion. 

Amazon last year announced plans to launch the satellite pair aboard the first flight of ULA's new Vulcan rocket, moving them off previously planned rockets from launch startup ABL Space to avoid delays in ABL's rocket development.

But delays with Vulcan have prompted Amazon to again switch rides as the e-commerce giant faces a 2026 regulatory deadline to deploy half of the 3,200 satellites planned for its Kuiper internet network. Vulcan, which had been expected to launch in early 2023 at the time of Amazon's decision to use it, has run into testing hiccups that now peg its target launch date in the fourth quarter of 2023, a ULA spokeswoman said.

ULA 2021 stopped selling the Atlas V and has 19 more missions to fly before the rocket retires, ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said. The company had imported the rocket's Russian-made RD-180 engines in bulk for those remaining missions and has no plans to order more.