United Launch Alliance’s beleaguered Vulcan rocket returned to service Sunday under clear blue skies streaking over the Space Coast more than nine months since its last flight.

Outfitted with six solid rocket boosters in its most powerful configuration, the rocket produced nearly 3.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. On board was its biggest payload of any ULA rocket ever — 40 Amazon Leo satellites to add to that company’s burgeoning broadband internet constellation. It’s the first of 38 planned launches to help reinvigorate Amazon’s game of catchup to SpaceX’s lucrative Starlink satellite program.

Liftoff finally came at 12:40 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41, but only after teams worked through an initial problem that caused a hold at the launch window’s opening. The flight also came after two days of delays because of a power outage at a gaseous nitrogen supplier on Friday, and then communication problems at the pad on Saturday.

Vulcan is ULA’s replacement for its remaining Atlas V and already retired Delta IV family of rockets. This is only the fifth launch of Vulcan since its debut in 2024, though.

Its last launch on Feb. 12 saw one of its boosters nozzles burn off during ascent, a problem that also happened on its second ever launch, and one that ULA leaders had initially said was solved.

Amazon is counting on ULA to start making good on its contract to provide a steady supply of its satellites to space. ULA constructed a second vertical integration facility at SLC-41 dedicated to support Amazon flights.

Amazon has plans to get more than 3,200 satellites over the next few years.

Before Sunday’s launch, though, Amazon had managed to get only 398 satellites off the ground through a combination of launches on ULA’s dwindling supply of Atlas V rockets and SpaceX Falcon 9 missions from Cape Canaveral while also flying on Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rockets from South America.

SpaceX, meanwhile, surpassed this year 13,000 satellites launched since the first operational ones were deployed in 2019, according to statistics maintained by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

Blue Origin was also supposed to have begun Amazon Leo launches this year with its New Glenn rocket, but an explosion at Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 damaged the pad and New Glenn won’t fly again until 2027.

Vulcan, though, was supposed to have had its first Amazon launch this past summer, with ULA planning to juggle Vulcan and Atlas V missions throughout the year.

But Vulcan had been on hold since its previous launch on Feb. 12. During what was its first national security mission, Vulcan’s trip to space had a problem with one of its solid rocket boosters, which are supplied by Northrop Grumman. The nozzle on one of the boosters burned off during ascent. The problem was similar to one seen on Vulcan’s second launch in 2024, and one the company has said it had solved.

So did the nozzle issue get fixed? There was no issue on its trip to space Sunday, but the company said it was not 100% certain what the issue was.

The company stated it expects more reliability, and that it understands how the burn-through occurred on the last flight. But it had not nailed down the culprit, but rather “identified several potential contributors which have been mitigated through design and process improvements to the nozzle.”

Amazon certainly is counting on Vulcan as it has oodles of satellites ready to fly. In September, the company completed the manufacture of its 1,000th Amazon Leo satellite.

ULA officials said a second Vulcan was already being prepared in Cape Canaveral and could launch again before the end of the year for Amazon.

ULA also has a backlog of more than two dozen national security launches for Vulcan, but the Space Force has yet to announce when it will trust its payloads back on Vulcan. After the February incident, the government said it would not fly on Vulcan again until it figured out the nozzle issue.

And with New Glenn off the board, all national security missions have flowed instead to SpaceX flying on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. SpaceX, though, has announced it intends to wind down its Falcon launch manifest, which limits the government’s options after 2028.

If ULA does get Vulcan up and running without issue, the company had been prepared to fly as many as 24 launches a year from Florida while it also continues to prepare for launches from California.

While Vulcan was grounded, ULA exhausted all but six of its Atlas V rockets this year, with all of those remaining set aside for Boeing’s Starliner missions.

The mission marked ULA’s sixth launch of the year, and the Space Coast’s 61st, with all but eight coming from SpaceX. Blue Origin managed one launch before the pad explosion and the other flight was NASA’s Space Launch System rocket on the Artemis II mission.

It had been 26 days since the last launch on Oct. 20.

The launch rate on the Space Coast fell off from 2025’s record 109 orbital flights because of changing priorities from SpaceX. Elon Musk’s company has only flown Falcon Heavy missions from its pad at Kennedy Space Center as it works to complete the Starship and Super Heavy launch tower at KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A.

It also stopped flying Starlink missions on Falcon 9 rockets from Florida, leaving those duties to its California operation.

There is still a chance Starship may have its first Florida launch before the end of the year. Its test launch Friday from Texas sent the upper stage to space to orbit Earth 14 times before it returned to the launch site Saturday, where SpaceX was able to successfully capture it on the launch tower. The next flight could be from KSC, which will be complete by next month.

For now, though, SpaceX has only one more launch on 2026’s manifest, a resupply mission at the end of the month to the International Space Station flying Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, plus ULA may launch Vulcan again.

Another Falcon Heavy launch looks to have pushed to no earlier than early January, flying Voyager Technologies’ Griffin lunar lander to the moon.

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