Amazon to FCC: Give us extension for Leo satellite deployment as we are facing shortage of …

Amazon has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with a deadline request. In the letter, the company has asked for more time to meet a deadline that requires it to deploy roughly 1,600 internet satellites by July 2026. According to Amazon, it’s been harder than expected to secure rides for its Amazon Leo broadband internet satellites. The request for an extension, asks the FCC to give the company time until July 30, 2028, to deploy half of its 3,232 satellites in low Earth orbit. The current deadline is July 30, 2026.Amazon said it’s spent more than $10 billion on its Leo constellation and has reserved more than 100 launches to get the satellites in their proper orbits. But it acknowledged that it’ll miss the original deadline, which was set in 2020 when the FCC gave the initial go-ahead for what was then known as Project Kuiper.“Amazon Leo is now scaling fast. It has established large and state-of-the-art production facilities within the U.S., which are capable of manufacturing 30 satellites per week. To launch satellites produced at this pace, Amazon Leo executed the largest commercial procurement of launch capacity in history; it now has a manifest with more than 100 missions planned through Q1 2029. This equates to an average of three planned launches per month for the next three years, each of which will carry an average of more than 40 new satellites into low-Earth orbit. To facilitate this rapid launch cadence, Amazon Leo has built the largest rocket payload processing facility in the world, a 172,000-square- , which can support up to three simultaneous launch campaigns from any major launch supplier,” says the letter. It adds, “Despite a historic reserve of launch capacity and deep investments in launch infrastructure, Amazon Leo has faced a shortage in the near-term availability of launches. This shortage has been driven by manufacturing disruptions, the failure and grounding of new launch vehicles, and limitations in spaceport capacity. Because Amazon Leo is producing satellites considerably faster than others can launch them, it has adjusted its rate of satellite production to match its launch manifest and built facilities spanning hundreds of thousands of square feet near its manufacturing and launch sites to store hundreds of already-built-and-ready-to-launch satellites.“The letter claims that the delay is beyond Amazon’s control. “Amazon Leo has deliberately invested heavily in the next generation of American heavy-lift launch vehicles, supporting U.S. leadership in space and strengthening the domestic launch industrial base. Three of Amazon’s four primary launch providers — Blue Origin, ULA, and SpaceX are US-based companies and Amazon’s Leo contracts have helped fund the development and certification of cutting-edge vehicles including Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan Centaur. Each provider has made significant progress — New Glenn successfully reached orbit on its maiden flight in January 2025 and achieved its first booster landing in November 2025; Ariane 6 completed multiple successful launches in 2025, with Amazon Leo satellites scheduled for early 2026; and Vulcan Centaur has likewise demonstrated successful launches. Notwithstanding this progress, the development timelines for these next-generation vehicles have extended beyond initial projections, contributing to Amazon Leo’s deployment delays.” It said, “For these and similar reasons, Amazon Leo completed only 7 of the more than 20 launches originally scheduled for 2025.” By the end of July, Amazon expects to have 700 satellites in orbit. “By this date, Amazon Leo also expects to have its customer terminals in the hands of more enterprise and government customers, and to be poised to roll out service more broadly in the U.S. and across the globe,” Amazon said.Amazon insisted that it will make a final FCC deadline to have all of its planned 3,232 satellites deployed by mid-2029. In the filing, the company suggested that the agency could just go ahead and waive the halfway-point deadline as an alternative to granting an extension.