By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON, July 2 (Reuters) - Amazon expects to roll out initial internet service with its Leo broadband satellite network later this year after the company's latest launch put the orbiting constellation's satellite count over 390, a company executive said on Thursday.
Amazon's latest batch of 29 satellites lifted off from Florida early on Thursday aboard an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance, marking the company's 14th launch of dozens more planned to deploy more than 3,200
satellites that will provide global internet coverage from space.
"Still lots of work ahead – including raising all these new satellites to their assigned altitude," Amazon's Leo chief Chris Weber said in a post on X. "But we’ve completed enough launches for initial service this yr, and future missions just add coverage and capacity."
Weber did not say in which region Amazon plans to begin service, but initial service is expected to begin near Earth's north and south poles and gradually spread inward toward the equator as more satellites are added.
The constellation has 394 satellites in orbit so far of 398 launched since April 2025, according to spaceflight analyst and Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
The growing Leo constellation is a budding rival to SpaceX's established Starlink, which has a growing tally of roughly 10,000 satellites. Like Starlink, Amazon plans to offer internet service to consumers with Leo terminals - sized from roughly the size of a laptop to larger and more powerful versions - as well as governments and companies such as airlines.
Amazon has been targeting a service start of mid-2026, relying on tens of billions of dollars worth of rocket bookings to loft its satellites into space. ULA's Atlas V has become a workhorse for the network as the other rockets Amazon plans to use, Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan, are grounded.
A New Glenn rocket exploded on its launchpad last month, destroying the launch tower and other hardware. The company's CEO Dave Limp expects to resume New Glenn launches by the end of the year as engineers zero in on the rocket's engine section to figure out what caused the explosion.
ULA's new Vulcan rocket, which is booked to launch at least 40 Leo missions for Amazon, is also grounded over a solid rocket motor separation issue it encountered in February. Vulcan uses the same Blue Origin-built BE-4 engines as New Glenn and may see its return-to-flight further delayed if Blue Origin finds the BE-4 engines at fault for the New Glenn explosion.
ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said Blue Origin engineers "are being transparent with us as they work through the investigation. If there are crossover items with the BE-4 engines, we will collaborate with the team to find root cause and address it."
Amazon has roughly 100 rocket launches booked worth at least $82 billion in total to build out the constellation. Its other launch providers include French rocket maker Arianespace's Ariane 6 and SpaceX's Falcon 9, the partially reusable rocket that has been vital to SpaceX's deployment of its own Starlink satellites.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette, Editing by Nick Zieminski)
