News: 0179547090

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

ULA Launches Third Batch of Amazon's Project Kuiper Satellites (spaceflightnow.com)

(Sunday September 28, 2025 @03:34AM (BeauHD) from the there's-more-where-that-came-from dept.)


United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket [1]launched 27 more Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon from Cape Canaveral , bringing the constellation's total to 129 in orbit. By the end of the year, Amazon expects over 200 satellites will be deployed, with commercial service starting in several countries by early 2026. Spaceflight Now reports:

> This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low Earth orbit constellation. [...] The 27 Project Kuiper satellites will be deployed at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. Control will shift over to the Project Kuiper team at their 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. The separation sequence began about 20 minutes after liftoff, concluding about 15 minutes later. From there, they will confirm satellite health, and eventually raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth.



[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/09/25/live-coverage-ula-to-launch-fifth-batch-of-amazons-project-kuiper-satellites-from-cape-canaveral/



I am rooting for Blue Origin now. (Score:3)

by ndsurvivor ( 891239 )

This statement may bite me in the ass someday, but two Billionaires competing does seem better than one. I mean if they are really competing. Blue Origin seems to be on the edge of launching a falcon 9 competing rocket. Cool.

Re: (Score:2)

by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )

Just like it is with any other alien fight in Earth orbit, whoever wins, you lose.

Re: (Score:1)

by saloomy ( 2817221 )

I have Starlink as my backup internet because as much as I love 5gbps symmetrical FIOS, it does go down from time to time, and Starlink is a great backup. I am winning with it, also at the cabin by Big Bear. Sorry you feel billionaires winning means you lose (as you probably commented on your billionaire-making phone you feel like winning every time you upgrade and use it).

Re: (Score:2)

by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )

I'm truly sorry that you're so wrong about the devices I use to write stuff with. But it is okay, I'm sure you're are winning bigly on the Internet in all other ways possible.

Re: (Score:2)

by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

> Just like it is with any other alien fight in Earth orbit, whoever wins, you lose.

Who hurt you?

Re: (Score:2)

by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

> Hurt? Quite the opposite, your wife was very nice to me.

She usually is. She introduced me to your mom.Your mom's nice too.

Re: (Score:2)

by Megane ( 129182 )

Any day now! You do know that BO has been a company longer than SpaceX, right? They've wasted far too long on their little carnival ride. Good that they're finally going to compete with old tech that's been around for years now. SpaceX has already had over 500 landings of the F9, when few rockets ever get near that number of launches.

Re: (Score:2)

by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

> Any day now! You do know that BO has been a company longer than SpaceX, right? They've wasted far too long on their little carnival ride. Good that they're finally going to compete with old tech that's been around for years now. SpaceX has already had over 500 landings of the F9, when few rockets ever get near that number of launches.

And we have to understand the fact that the most important thing in Rocketry is landing. Payload? Meh, Landing is the only thing.

It is utterly bizarre you would flex on that. Sounds like you believe there should be only one ring to rule them all, and the king being (genuflect) Elon Musk.

Re: (Score:2)

by Rei ( 128717 )

Payload is absolutely not the most important thing in rocketry. *Payload per unit cost* is.

Exactly how cheap do you think air travel would be if, after every flight, they threw the plane away?

Re: (Score:2)

by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

> Payload is absolutely not the most important thing in rocketry. *Payload per unit cost* is.

> Exactly how cheap do you think air travel would be if, after every flight, they threw the plane away?

Whoosh! If you know me, I love to troll the cult of Musk.

And I'm not the one who used return as the major metric.

I even like the Falcons, though not so much the rocket which will transport the million people to Mars by 2050. However, since you and he seem to think that Returning the Rocket - I take it you believe the Apollo program shouldn't have happened - I mean those wasteful assets didn't return anything but that little capsule, so we never should have went.

Next up - since return is paramount

Re:I am rooting for Blue Origin now. (Score:4, Informative)

by Rei ( 128717 )

> I take it you believe the Apollo program shouldn't have happened

What did you pull that out of? The technology was nowhere near mature enough back then. That doesn't change the economic picture of throwing away your entire rocket every flight.

(We can argue whether "flags and footsteps" were worth spending an amount of money best measured in a percentage of your GDP, but that has nothing to do with the reuse question)

> Next up

Lol, "next up"? You clearly think you hit your straw man out of the park ;)

> since return is paramount - are you in agreement that only launch envelopes that allow return hold be allowed

"Be allowed"? Do you do anything other than straw men, or is that literally the only way you know how to carry out conversations on the internet?

SpaceX "allows" anyone to choose a disposable mission. Almost nobody chooses that because reuse is cheaper. In general, the only times when disposal is chosen is when there is literally no option but disposal in order to meet the spacecraft's performance needs .

Again: if you were given a choice when buying a plane ticket, either it can be cheap, or it can be expensive because they're going to wreck the plane specifically on your behalf, unless you had some really pressing need to wreck the plane, you're not choosing that option .

> As a smart person who understands orbit mechanics

As an internet asshole, do you know that you actually have the option to not be an asshole online?

> you do know that only very specific launch envelopes allow return.

First off, it's not even clear what you're referring to with "return". Boosters don't even reach orbit , so bringing up the concept of launch envelopes and return from them related to "orbital mechanics" is ill-formed. Booster return is entirely contingent on whether the payload needs an extreme level of performance beyond that which the system can meet with reuse , e.g. whether they absolutely have to remove the landing legs and grid fins to lighten the booster and burn every last drop of propellant. Only an extremely small fraction of launches fit into this category. Falcon 9 - the vehicle in question - only does booster return, so this conversation ends there.

If we want to talk about something other than F9, like, say, Starship, saying "only very specific launch envelopes allow return" is also wrong - again, unless your payload needs so much performance that the upper stage will not reenter the atmosphere (or you deliberately designed a trajectory to specifically make the stage come in hard). Their TPS design goal is to be able to burn off the heat of even mars transfer orbits . Now, one can argue that they'll fail in that goal, but you need to list your assumption of failure as a premise. Regardless, though, unless the entire project is a failure, the upper stage will handle return all "normal" Earth orbits. It has on-orbit reignition and can target its entry trajectory.

> If a falcon 9 or heavy needs to go to a different orbit, it has to be abandoned

Again, this makes no sense. Are you positing launches where they change their mind partway through ascent or after it reaches orbit? "Nah, we don't REALLY want it in that trajectory, let's do a different one!"?

In the real world , again, the only times they expend a booster is when the performance needs of the payload are beyond what they can deliver in reusable mode, even with Falcon Heavy (or occasionally for testing, etc). And the upper stage of F9/FH never returns, because it can't, so it's not part of the discussion (they've done some work on trying to make it recoverable, but in each cases it was a "better to put the effort toward Starship" situation... which is IMHO kind of a shame, in that I'd love to see the maturation of e.g. inflatable entry systems, one of the possibilities they were considering).

[1]Read the rest of this comment...

[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23806084&cid=65686954

Re: (Score:3)

by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

>> I take it you believe the Apollo program shouldn't have happened

> What did you pull that out of? The technology was nowhere near mature enough back then. That doesn't change the economic picture of throwing away your entire rocket every flight.

> (We can argue whether "flags and footsteps" were worth spending an amount of money best measured in a percentage of your GDP, but that has nothing to do with the reuse question)

>> Next up

> Lol, "next up"? You clearly think you hit your straw man out of the park ;)

>> since return is paramount - are you in agreement that only launch envelopes that allow return hold be allowed

> "Be allowed"? Do you do anything other than straw men, or is that literally the only way you know how to carry out conversations on the internet?

> SpaceX "allows" anyone to choose a disposable mission. Almost nobody chooses that because reuse is cheaper. In general, the only times when disposal is chosen is when there is literally no option but disposal in order to meet the spacecraft's performance needs .

> Again: if you were given a choice when buying a plane ticket, either it can be cheap, or it can be expensive because they're going to wreck the plane specifically on your behalf, unless you had some really pressing need to wreck the plane, you're not choosing that option .

>> As a smart person who understands orbit mechanics

> As an internet asshole, do you know that you actually have the option to not be an asshole online?

>> you do know that only very specific launch envelopes allow return.

> First off, it's not even clear what you're referring to with "return". Boosters don't even reach orbit , so bringing up the concept of launch envelopes and return from them related to "orbital mechanics" is ill-formed. Booster return is entirely contingent on whether the payload needs an extreme level of performance beyond that which the system can meet with reuse , e.g. whether they absolutely have to remove the landing legs and grid fins to lighten the booster and burn every last drop of propellant. Only an extremely small fraction of launches fit into this category. Falcon 9 - the vehicle in question - only does booster return, so this conversation ends there.

> If we want to talk about something other than F9, like, say, Starship, saying "only very specific launch envelopes allow return" is also wrong - again, unless your payload needs so much performance that the upper stage will not reenter the atmosphere (or you deliberately designed a trajectory to specifically make the stage come in hard). Their TPS design goal is to be able to burn off the heat of even mars transfer orbits . Now, one can argue that they'll fail in that goal, but you need to list your assumption of failure as a premise. Regardless, though, unless the entire project is a failure, the upper stage will handle return all "normal" Earth orbits. It has on-orbit reignition and can target its entry trajectory.

>> If a falcon 9 or heavy needs to go to a different orbit, it has to be abandoned

> Again, this makes no sense. Are you positing launches where they change their mind partway through ascent or after it reaches orbit? "Nah, we don't REALLY want it in that trajectory, let's do a different one!"?

> In the real world , again, the only times they expend a booster is when the performance needs of the payload are beyond what they can deliver in reusable mode, even with Falcon Heavy (or occasionally for testing, etc). And the upper stage of F9/FH never returns, because it can't, so it's not part of the discussion (they've done some work on trying to make it recoverable, but in each cases it was a "better to put the effort toward Starship" situation... which is IMHO kind of a shame, in that I'd love to see the maturation of e.g. inflatable entry systems, one of the possibilities they were considering).

Normally I'd trim the quotes, but this is delicious.

My troll game is working well on you. I can say many things, you hit your rage button, and then entertain me. Thanks - it's appreciated bigly.

Please now, claim you aren't enraged, and maybe I can put out a trifecta - That is, if I don't get bored with you. Your turn, cultist! Do not disappoint, because I'm not the only person in here who enjoys trolling the Muskovites.

Re: (Score:2)

by Rei ( 128717 )

And here is the problem: you're so bad at social interaction that you can't tell the difference between a rebuttal and "rage". You have some sort of fantasy about someone on the other side of the world smashing their keyboard and stewing over your words all day.

I hate it to break it to you, but that's just your pathetic imagination.

Re: (Score:2)

by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

> And here is the problem: you're so bad at social interaction that you can't tell the difference between a rebuttal and "rage". You have some sort of fantasy about someone on the other side of the world smashing their keyboard and stewing over your words all day.

> I hate it to break it to you, but that's just your pathetic imagination.

Dear Rei - Your idea that I am bad at social interaction is most amusing. Nono, dear Rei - I am quite social. You simply mistake that because I treat you like you deserve to be treated. I don't suffer fools gladly, indeed I treat them as I treat you. I judge. You deserve every bit of assholery I send your way.

That it annoys the bejabbers out of you, is grist for my mill.

You make these claims about me, apparently not understanding you are looking at your reflection in a mirror. And dear Rei, I hold

a 7 minute space fligt vs going to the ISS (Score:2)

by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 )

It's like a speed race between a kid on a tricycle and grandpa on his Harley.

Re: (Score:2)

by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

> This statement may bite me in the ass someday, but two Billionaires competing does seem better than one. I mean if they are really competing. Blue Origin seems to be on the edge of launching a falcon 9 competing rocket. Cool.

Exactly. The whole rocketry game is not here to be under Elon Musk's thumb. Nor is it supposed to be. While I have serious concerns about littering LEO with satellites, Having multiple service providers, multiple weight capacities from some of the little guys to the Falcons to the SLS is a great stable of rockets and providers.

Starlink needs competition. (Score:2)

by outsider007 ( 115534 )

They jacked up my prices recently and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

by ndsurvivor ( 891239 )

I think 20 to 25 year ago things like this was the domain of NASA. They did set out to privatize their technology, and it worked. Now they should keep doing pure science missions, in my humble opinion. In a "perfect world". They should keep passing on the science to American Companies. It seems like a virtuous circle of government and private investment.

Re: (Score:1)

by saloomy ( 2817221 )

I really do wonder when SpaceX has enough tech to get to Mars and can self fund, what NASA will turn into, as "exploration" will be eclipsed by private space companies who no longer need NASA contracts.

Re: (Score:2)

by Rei ( 128717 )

Private companies aren't funding "exploration" to any meaningful degree, and nor do they want to.

SpaceX's goal is to be "the bus" for getting to space and Mars. Not to be launching expeditions into remote areas and conducting basic science.

Re: (Score:3)

by Rei ( 128717 )

A contract is not a subsidy. They get contracts because they easily undercut their competitors.

NASA and the DoD want a service. SpaceX sells that service to them. It's not complicated. The government has saved massive amounts of money with SpaceX relative to ULA.

Also, for the record, most of SpaceX's work is internal (Starlink), and the nextmost is commercial. Government is in third place

Re: (Score:2)

by saloomy ( 2817221 )

You could stop using it. You were alive and well before it came along. Right?

go to Kuiper belt or get a new name amazon (Score:1)

by Mirddes ( 798147 )

was super excited only to be let down again

atlas (Score:2)

by groobly ( 6155920 )

Go Atlas! You're only as old as you feel.

I'm young ... I'm HEALTHY ... I can HIKE THRU CAPT GROGAN'S LUMBAR REGIONS!