The company will launch the first two satellites for
Amazon's Kuiper program, which aims to offer internet globally from space,
aboard a dedicated Atlas V rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United
Launch Alliance (ULA), spokesman James Watkins said.
The targeted launch date is September 26, he said.
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.
Russia to Launch Lunar Spacecraft in Race to Find Water on
Moon
RACE TO ORBIT
Aiming to complement Amazon's web services powerhouse and
compete with the more established Starlink network from Elon Musk's SpaceX,
Amazon has vowed to put $10 billion into the satellite internet endeavor and in
2022 bagged 83 launches to deploy it in orbit, marking the largest commercial
launch procurement ever.
Nine of those launches include the Atlas V rocket, ULA's
workhorse launcher that has lofted satellites to space in multibillion-dollar
science missions for NASA and the bulk of US national security missions for the
Pentagon.
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.
It was unclear whether the Atlas V launch planned for
September counts as one of the nine that Amazon previously procured. © Reuters