ULA scrubs 2nd Kuiper constellation launch due to technical issue
ULA today scrubbed its second Atlas-5 launch to place 27 more of Amazon’s Kuiper constellation satellites into orbit due to “an engineering observation of an elevated purge temperature within the booster engine.”
At the moment no new launch date has been scheduled.
So far Amazon has only placed 27 operational Kuiper satellites into orbit, on a single Atlas-5 launch in April. According to its FCC license, it must have 1,600 satellites in orbit by July 2026. Though it has contracts to launch these satellites 46 times on ULA rockets (8 on Atlas-5 and 36 on Vulcan), 27 times on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, 18 times on ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6, and 3 times on SpaceX’s Falcon-9, except for SpaceX all these companies have had problems getting off the ground.
Whether Amazon can meet the FAA licence requirement by next year is becoming increasingly questionable.
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ULA today scrubbed its second Atlas-5 launch to place 27 more of Amazon’s Kuiper constellation satellites into orbit due to “an engineering observation of an elevated purge temperature within the booster engine.”
At the moment no new launch date has been scheduled.
So far Amazon has only placed 27 operational Kuiper satellites into orbit, on a single Atlas-5 launch in April. According to its FCC license, it must have 1,600 satellites in orbit by July 2026. Though it has contracts to launch these satellites 46 times on ULA rockets (8 on Atlas-5 and 36 on Vulcan), 27 times on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, 18 times on ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6, and 3 times on SpaceX’s Falcon-9, except for SpaceX all these companies have had problems getting off the ground.
Whether Amazon can meet the FAA licence requirement by next year is becoming increasingly questionable.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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“Increasingly questionable” seems an overly polite turn of phrase. Quite apart from “retail” launch delays on rockets actually in service – and this one from ULA isn’t likely to be lengthy – Kuiper’s deployment is being held up by the “wholesale” launch delays attendant upon betting nearly the entre farm on three rockets that, even now, are barely there.
Then there is the separate matter of satellite production cadence. The only reason the first launch of operational Kuipersats didn’t occur until April was that it took Amazon until then to produce the first 27 units – ULA’s Atlas Vs were not the roadblock on the critical path.
Amazon has cranked out at least an additional 27 units since April, but it’s going to need a lot more than that to fill not only this latest Atlas V but also the three Falcon 9s currently shown as scheduled for June launches but without any assigned launch dates as yet. This lack of specificity can have nothing to do with Falcon 9 availability so I take it to be an indication that the uncertainty is all on the Kuipersat production side of things. That being so, I will hardly be surprised if one of more of the three prospective F9 Kuipersat missions is delayed into July or even beyond.
27 sats produced over two months is about one sat every two days. Amazon is going to have to quickly ramp that production cadence up by about a full order of magnitude if it is to have any chance of deploying 1,600 sats in barely over a year. And if the launch cadences of Vulcan, New Glenn and Ariane 6 don’t all also take sharp ticks upward, that would put launch capacity back as the critical path roadblock. The only potential escape from a launch availability dearth on the currently designated vehicles would be to make a sizable deal with SpaceX – which would be, without question, delighted to book the business.
But production cadence is key. If that falls short, not even SpaceX will be able to pull Amazon’s chestnuts out of the fire.
*This* is the real issue that Amazon has to solve.
I think that the FCC will cut them a lot of slack on an extension if the problem is just lack of launch capability. But if they can’t get the satellites manufactured and ready in the first place, it calls the whole program into question in a more fundamental way.
Elon Musk fired Rajeev Badyal from his gig as head of Starlink precisely because manufacturing was going so slowly, Now Rajeev runs Kuiper. It does make one wonder.
To achieve 1600 satellites in orbit by next July will require 1 launch a week using 4 different rocket systems deploying an average of 30 at a throw with no launch failures. Suuuuurrrrreeeeee, that’s going to happen no problem. NOT!!!