Covering All Things Florida
Artemis II made the trip from Launch Complex 39B to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building today. The approximately 4-mile trek aboard Crawler-Transporter 2 began at around 9 AM ET and lasted until around 8 PM, when it arrived inside Bay 3 for repairs and battery updates.
2026 promises to be the most transformative year in American spaceflight since the Apollo era. From Artemis II astronauts circling the Moon to the first commercial space stations, here’s what’s coming.
A rising sun wasn’t the only thing lighting up the Florida sky this week. Cape Canaveral was alive with rocket fire, echoing a surge of launches that lit the sky in rapid succession. In just a few days, three major missions—Starlink, IMAP, and Ku3 (Project Kuiper)—departed from Florida shores, each on a different path but together marking a bracing tempo of space activity.
As Space Coast skies faded into night, United Launch Alliance launched their Vulcan-Centaur rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at 7:59 PM Eastern Time, carrying the classified USSF-106 mission for the U.S. Space Force. The evening launch, near the end of the one-hour window, was a successful return for the vehicle after its near-catastrophic solid rocket failure in its last launch in October, 2024.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Amazon’s Project Kuiper advanced another notch with the launch of its second batch of satellites, known as Kuiper Atlas 2 (KA-02), on June 23, 2025. The mission took off at 6:54 a.m. EDT (1054 UTC) from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida using a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. The successful deployment marks another step in Amazon’s plan to create a global broadband internet network to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.
Summer is nearly back on the Space Coast, with warm temperatures and a persistent threat of rain in the afternoon and evenings — typical weather here, and it will stay this way for several months. That being said, Atlas V was able to beat the weather last night and launched at the opening of its window, with liftoff at 7:01 PM ET after an apparently quiet countdown, save for some concerns about the energy potential of a nearby anvil cloud (Cumulonimbus incus) lingering near the launch pad before dissipating.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, United Launch Alliance (ULA) is set to launch an Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying the first batch of production satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation. Another ULA rocket, the Vulcan, will not be launching a previously assigned military GPS satellite. It has been reassigned to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, marking the second such change in recent months. Here’s what you need to know about these developments in the world of spaceflight.
Amazon is set to launch its first 27 production satellites for Project Kuiper aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket on April 9, 2025. The launch is scheduled for noon EDT from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with a three-hour launch window.
Pete Carstens is a man who can see things almost no one else can. Long after launch spectators and even launch photographers have called it a day, Pete continues tracking the launch, watching the streaking rocket sometimes almost all the way to orbit. Fortunately, he shares everything he sees, making space flight journalism all the better for it.
United Launch Alliances’s CERT-2 flight launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:25 AM EDT this morning. Almost immediately from the point of launch, observers noticed that something didn’t look quite right as Vulcan booster rose from the pad.
United Launch Alliance is planning to launch its second Vulcan rocket early tomorrow morning from Space Launch Complex 41. Liftoff is currently scheduled for 06:00 AM EDT, with a launch window that extends to 09:00 AM EDT the same day.
The launch is planned for about 75 minutes before sunrise, and if liftoff occurs before the sun peeks over the horizon, the expanding gases of the second stage may produce a spectacular display.
United Launch Alliance has moved its second Vulcan Rocket from their Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 to the launch mount. Final preparations can now begin for a launch scheduled for NET (not earlier than) Friday morning. Launch time is unofficially expected to be between 06:00 AM – 009:00 AM EDT, but ULA has not yet announced an official time for T-0.
