Amazon to Launch 40 Leo Satellites on ULA’s Vulcan on Nov. 13 — Largest Leo Payload Yet

Amazon plans to launch 40 of its Leo broadband satellites on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket on Nov. 13 from Cape Canaveral, marking the biggest Leo payload yet and the first mission in a 38-launch Vulcan campaign that will be central to building out the company’s satellite-internet network.

The mission, called Leo Vulcan 1, or LV-01, is currently targeted for Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, at 12:54 p.m. Eastern, or 17:54 UTC, pending range approval. The rocket is set to lift off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Amazon Leo said the mission will carry 40 satellites to low Earth orbit.

The flight is significant for two reasons. For Amazon, it opens a major new phase in deploying its planned broadband constellation. For ULA, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin launch joint venture, it is scheduled to be Vulcan’s return to flight after a months-long grounding tied to solid-rocket-booster nozzle anomalies on earlier missions, according to independent reporting cited in research for this story.

Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, is Amazon’s planned low Earth orbit internet network and the company’s biggest bid to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink. Amazon has said its first-generation system will include more than 3,000 satellites; FCC records cited in the research list 3,232 satellites in the Gen-1 authorization. In April 2022, Amazon announced launch agreements for up to 83 missions across ULA, Arianespace and Blue Origin, including 38 on Vulcan.

This will be Amazon Leo’s first mission on Vulcan, a rocket Amazon expects to do much of the heavy lifting for the network. Melissa Wuerl, director of launch systems for Amazon Leo, said, “Vulcan will launch close to half our first-generation constellation, making it our primary workhorse over the next several years.” Amazon has said Vulcan will carry “close to half” of the first-generation network.

The Nov. 13 mission also underscores the scale of Amazon’s production push. The company said it completed its 1,000th satellite in early September and has hundreds of flight-ready satellites staged at Cape Canaveral. Amazon has also built dedicated processing infrastructure there for Leo missions, and it says LV-02 is being prepared in parallel, signaling a faster launch cadence as the constellation ramp-up begins.