Vulcan Rocket Returns Saturday With 40 Amazon Satellites

United Launch Alliance has set Vulcan's return to flight for Saturday, November 14, 2026. Liftoff is targeted for 12:32 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, inside a 29-minute window. The mission, designated LV-01, carries 40 Amazon Leo broadband satellites to low-Earth orbit.

Friday's attempt didn't reach the pad count's end. ULA scrubbed at 8:41 a.m. Eastern after a power interruption at the Air Liquide gaseous nitrogen plant cut power to the facility's high-pressure pumps. The rocket and its payload weren't the problem, and the company reset the count for Saturday.

The stakes run past one scrub. Vulcan hasn't flown since February 12, 2026, when a solid rocket booster nozzle failed during the USSF-87 national security mission and sparks showered the ascent. Saturday's flight is Vulcan's fifth since its January 2024 debut, and it's the first with the maximum six solid boosters strapped on.

Amazon needs the cadence more than the headline. The 40 satellites are the largest Leo batch launched at once, and tracking data counted 396 Leo satellites across 14 missions as of November 11. The full constellation plans 3,236 satellites. Amazon missed the Federal Communications Commission's interim deadline of 1,616 satellites by July 30, 2026, and it has booked 38 Vulcan missions to close the gap.

Leo, formerly Project Kuiper, is Amazon's answer to SpaceX's Starlink. Amazon says initial service starts before the end of 2026 in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada. That start depends on satellites in orbit, not on rockets on a manifest, and every grounded month has pushed against it.

A clean Saturday flight puts Vulcan back on the board as Leo's primary workhorse. Another anomaly would leave Amazon's largest launch contract parked again, with the constellation at about an eighth of its planned size and a service launch weeks away.