After both onshore and offshore weather headaches in the past week, SpaceX was back Monday night to finish up its third of three contracted launches of competitor Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper satellites.<\/p>\n
A Falcon 9 on the KF-3 mission was no match for torrents of rain across Florida late Thursday on its first launch window, followed by more Florida weather issues into the weekend, but also problems downrange because of heavy seas kicked up by Tropical Storm Jerry.<\/p>\n
The company took to clear night skies Monday, though, carrying 24 more of Amazon\u2019s broadband internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station\u2019s Space Launch Complex 40 at 9:58 p.m.<\/p>\n
It was the second launch of the day for SpaceX that managed a successful completion of the 11th test suborbital flight of its Starship and Super Heavy<\/a> from Texas.<\/p>\n Liftoff of KF-03! pic.twitter.com\/KW9PQm1tVj<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 14, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n The first-stage booster made its second flight with a recovery landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n It marked the 84th orbital launch<\/a> from all providers on the Space Coast in 2025 with all but five coming from SpaceX.<\/p>\n Including this mission, six of those have been for Amazon with three on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets and three on United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets.<\/p>\n With this batch, Amazon\u2019s satellite total will climb to 153. That\u2019s out of a planned 3,236 total needed to be in orbit by July 2029, half of which are supposed to be launched by July 2026, according to a license issued by the Federal Communications Commission.<\/p>\n That license was issued back in 2020, and Amazon followed that up by tapping ULA, Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin and European launch provider Arianespace to fly the lion\u2019s share of its satellites. In what Amazon called the largest procurement of launches<\/a> at one time ever made, it was leaning on ULA\u2019s Vulcan, Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn and Arianespace\u2019s Ariane 6, all in-development heavy-lift rockets, to provide up to 83 launches to get its constellation into space.<\/p>\n But all three of those rockets faced delays, and to date, none has launched with Amazon satellites. ULA\u2019s three batches flown on the smaller Atlas V rockets were on top of using one in 2023<\/a> with a pair of developmental pathfinder satellites.<\/p>\n ULA has five more Atlas V rockets ready to add another 135 satellites to the constellation. But with a need to get more satellites up sooner, Amazon turned to SpaceX, even though Elon Musk\u2019s company has its own broadband satellite constellation with Starlink.<\/p>\n Starlink already has launched nearly 10,000 of those since 2019, with more than 8,600 still in orbit, according to statistics maintained<\/a> by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.<\/p>\n