Amazon’s initiative to provide fast, affordable broadband to communities around the world.

The Atlas V 501 rocket will deliver its payload into low-Earth orbit (LEO) as part of the Project Kuiper Protoflight mission. The prototypes of the final Kuiper satellite design will allow Amazon to test its technology in space before beginning full-scale production launches next year.

The Protoflight launch is also the first mission in a partnership between ULA and Amazon to help deploy Project Kuiper’s LEO satellite constellation.

Amazon will use nine launches of the Atlas V rocket and 38 launches of the upcoming Vulcan Centaur to deploy its satellites.

Atlas V: The workhorse of United Launch Alliance's rocket fleet, combining Russian and American technology. It utilizes the Russian RD-180 engine for its first stage and is one of the most versatile rockets in the world, with 20 possible configurations—though only 10 have flown.

Specs

Height: 58.3 m (191 ft) with payload fairing, 52.4 m (172 ft) with Starliner

Diameter: 3.81 m (12.5 ft)

Mass: 590,000 kg (1,300,000 lb)

Stages: 2 (3 with Star 48 upper stage

Developed in the mid-to-late 1990s, the Atlas V is the fifth and final major version of the veteran Atlas rocket, which first flew in 1957. Lockheed Martin designed and built the Atlas V as part of the U.S. government’s 1994 initiative to create the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program for national security missions.

In 2006, the two companies with rockets in the EELV program—Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V and Boeing’s Delta IV—merged to form United Launch Alliance (ULA), establishing an effective monopoly on the U.S. market. For many years, the U.S. government paid ULA over $800 million annually, not for rockets or launches, but to maintain their facilities to be ready for EELV missions.

As a result, the pricing of the Atlas V has varied considerably over time. A basic Atlas V 401 (with no boosters and a single-engine second stage) cost between the high-$90 million range and $163 million USD in the 2000s and early 2010s. Since SpaceX began directly competing with ULA in the 2010s, significant price and cost-per-launch reductions have occurred. The Atlas V 501 variant costs a minimum of $120 million USD.

While it is not the cheapest rocket on the market, the Atlas V's safety and success record is unparalleled, boasting a 100% mission success rating.

For this mission, the Atlas V 501 variant will be used, featuring a 5-meter fairing, 0 solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and 1 Centaur upper-stage engine.

Image courtesy of ULA

Space Launch Complex-41 is the east-coast home of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. The pad hosted its first launch on December 21, 1965, and is currently being upgraded to support ULA's Vulcan rocket, with its first launch scheduled for no earlier than 2022. For several years, Vulcan and Atlas V will share the pad before Atlas V is retired.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, SLC-41 was used for the U.S. Air Force’s Titan III and Titan IV rockets. Over the years, it has served as the launch site for numerous significant missions, including the Helios probes to study the Sun, the Viking missions to Mars, the Voyager interstellar probes, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, New Horizons to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, and Juno to Jupiter.

The pad was also used to launch humans aboard Boeing's Starliner capsule, with the inaugural crewed mission occurring in June 2024.

Located on Florida’s east coast, Cape Canaveral is ideally situated to offer access to a wide variety of space destinations while launching over the open Atlantic Ocean, ensuring safety by avoiding populated areas on the ground. The Cape currently supports launches from four different rocket families: Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, and Minotaur. Additionally, launches of Vulcan from ULA and New Glenn from Blue Origin are scheduled to begin no earlier than 2024.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center, located on neighboring Merritt Island, and Cape Canaveral are often confused or referred to as a single location, but they are distinct government installations. Together, they are united under the name of a single operational area known as the Eastern Range for launch operations.

Over the years, the spaceport has been known by several names: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (1949-1963), Cape Kennedy Air Force Station (1963-1973), Cape Canaveral Air Force Station again (1973-2020), and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (2020-present).

Credit: ULA