Vulcan Return to Flight on 13 November: 40 Amazon Leo Satellites Aboard

After nine months on the ground, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket is ready to fly again. ULA is targeting 12:54 p.m. EST on Friday 13 November 2026 (17:54 UTC) for the Vulcan return to flight, lifting off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. On board are 40 satellites for Amazon Leo, the broadband constellation once known as Project Kuiper. ULA lists the mission on its next launch page as Leo Vulcan 1, or LV-01.

The flight matters for three groups at once. ULA needs to show that it has fixed the solid rocket booster problem that grounded Vulcan in February. Amazon needs a second heavy-lift rocket to fill its network quickly. And the U.S. Space Force, which relies on Vulcan for a large share of its national security launches, wants fresh flight data before it puts more military satellites on the rocket. You can follow the countdown on our next rocket launch page.

Why Vulcan has been grounded since February

Vulcan is a two-stage rocket. Its first stage is powered by two BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin, helped at liftoff by strap-on GEM 63XL solid rocket boosters made by Northrop Grumman. Twice in four flights, one of those boosters has misbehaved.

The first time was on the second certification flight, Cert-2, on 4 October 2024, when the nozzle fell off one booster shortly after liftoff. Vulcan still reached its planned orbit, and the Space Force certified the rocket for national security missions after the investigation. Then, on 12 February 2026, during the USSF-87 mission for the Space Force, a similar nozzle failure hit one of the four boosters less than 30 seconds into flight. That second failure led to the long pause. Northrop Grumman has since changed the nozzle design, and LV-01 will be the first flight to test the new parts in real conditions.

ULA has said more testing and analysis will continue alongside the return to flight, and the date still depends on approval from the Eastern Range. In other words, 13 November is a target, not a promise. Our rocket launch schedule will show any slip as soon as it is filed.

A bigger Vulcan than ever before

ULA is not easing back in with a light load. LV-01 flies in the VC6L configuration, which means six solid boosters instead of the two or four used so far. It is also the first flight of a shorter, optimised version of the Centaur V upper stage, which Amazon says lets Vulcan carry more satellites to low Earth orbit. Together, the six boosters and the new upper stage give Vulcan its best performance yet for this kind of mission.

The launch also opens new ground infrastructure that Amazon paid for at Cape Canaveral: a dedicated hangar called Vertical Integration Facility A (VIF-A), where the rocket is stacked, and a new mobile launch platform for Leo missions. According to Amazon's announcement, a second rocket for the LV-02 mission is already being prepared in ULA's original hangar and could launch within weeks if LV-01 goes as planned.

What Amazon Leo gets out of it

Forty satellites is the largest single batch Amazon has sent up so far. ULA has already launched eight Amazon Leo deployment missions on its older Atlas V rocket, and SpaceX and other providers have flown more. Before this launch, nearly 400 Amazon Leo satellites were in orbit. That is still a small fraction of the full first-generation network, which needs more than 3,000 spacecraft.

This is where Vulcan comes in. Amazon has booked 38 Vulcan launches, and it expects the rocket to carry more than 1,500 first-generation Leo satellites, more than any other launcher in the programme. Every month Vulcan sits on the ground is a month of lost launches for Amazon, which is racing to build out its service against SpaceX's much larger Starlink network. Amazon's other heavy-lift option, Blue Origin's New Glenn, is not expected to fly again until January 2027. You can see where the existing satellites are on our Amazon Leo tracker.

What happens on launch day

All 40 satellites have been encapsulated in the payload fairing and stacked on the rocket. After liftoff, the six solid boosters burn out and drop away in the first couple of minutes, then the BE-4 engines carry the stage on before separation. The Centaur V upper stage takes the satellites to low Earth orbit and releases them from an adapter over roughly half an hour.

Here is when the 12:54 p.m. EST target falls in other time zones:

• Los Angeles: 09:54 PST, Friday 13 November
• New York: 12:54 EST, Friday 13 November
• London: 17:54 GMT, Friday 13 November
• Berlin and Paris: 18:54 CET, Friday 13 November
• Dubai: 21:54, Friday 13 November
• New Delhi: 23:24 IST, Friday 13 November
• Tokyo: 02:54 JST, Saturday 14 November
• Sydney: 04:54 AEDT, Saturday 14 November

The launch site is one of the busiest on the planet. Our guide to rocket launch sites explains where SLC-41 sits on the Cape and which other rockets fly from the same coast.

Can you see the new Amazon Leo satellites?

Freshly launched broadband satellites often travel in a tight line for the first days after deployment, before they raise their orbits and spread out. Starlink made these "trains" famous, and new Amazon Leo batches can show the same effect around dawn and dusk when they catch sunlight against a dark sky. If you spot a line of moving lights, our guide on the Starlink train and operational satellites explains what you are looking at, and the tips on how to tell satellites from aircraft work for Amazon's satellites too.

What a successful Vulcan return to flight would unlock

If LV-01 flies cleanly, three things follow quickly. First, Amazon can move straight on to LV-02, which is already being stacked. Second, ULA can begin rebuilding its launch rate. Reports say the company hopes to fly Vulcan once more before the end of 2026 and then work up towards two launches a month, depending on how fast new nozzles come off Northrop Grumman's production line. Third, the Space Force gets the data it wants before returning its own satellites to the rocket.

If something goes wrong with the boosters a third time, the questions about Vulcan will get much harder, and Amazon's deployment plans would slip again. That is why a routine-looking satellite launch on a Friday afternoon in Florida is one of the most closely watched flights of the month. It shares the spotlight with SpaceX's Starship Flight 15, which is also targeting 13 November. Both will appear in our list of rocket launches this week, and we will report the Vulcan return to flight result as soon as the satellites are confirmed in orbit.