United Launch Alliance is set to launch 29 of Amazon's internet satellites into orbit on April 27, with an Atlas V rocket scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during a 29-minute window that opens at 8:52 p.m. EDT.
ULA calls the mission Amazon Leo 6, and coverage is due to begin about 20 minutes before launch. If the flight goes as planned, it will add 29 more satellites to a network that already has nine launches behind it and is still only partway to its final size of more than 3,200 spacecraft.
The mission matters because Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, is moving through the first big stretch of a buildout that will take more than 80 launches on a mix of rockets. So far, Atlas V has carried the bulk of the work with five Amazon Leo missions, while SpaceX's Falcon 9 has launched three and Arianespace's Ariane 6 has launched one.
The pace has picked up this month. Amazon Leo 5 launched on April 4 and set a new Atlas V payload record of 18 tons after sending 29 satellites skyward. The first four Atlas V Amazon Leo missions had put 27 broadband satellites into orbit, and the next one is slated to match the April 4 count with another 29.
That leaves the program with a simple but demanding task: keep launching, keep adding satellites and keep doing it fast enough to build a rival to SpaceX's Starlink internet megaconstellation. The next flight on the calendar after this Atlas V launch is an Ariane 6 Amazon Leo mission scheduled to lift off early Tuesday morning, April 28, from French Guiana.