On June 18th (local time, morning of June 17th), the Ariane 6 rocket successfully launched 36 satellites from Amazon’s low-Earth orbit satellite program into space from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana. Roughly two hours post-launch, all satellites were seamlessly deployed into their designated orbits. This marks the inaugural use of the P160C power booster by Europe’s Ariane 6 launch vehicle, significantly enhancing its low-Earth orbit payload capacity to around 22 tons. Under the terms of the contract, the Ariane 6 rocket is tasked with executing 18 launch missions to fully deploy Amazon’s constellation of low-orbit satellites, with this launch representing the third mission in the series.
