Amazon's satellite internet constellation — rebranded as Amazon Leo in November 2025 — has deployed hundreds of production satellites and is scaling rapidly toward its 3,236-satellite target. OrbitalNodes tracks every Kuiper / Amazon Leo satellite in real time.
OrbitalNodes' constellation counter shows how many Kuiper / Amazon Leo satellites are above your horizon right now, how many are in good viewing position, and when the next one will pass overhead. With launches accelerating through 2026 this count is growing fast.
Amazon's constellation is built for the same job as Starlink — low-Earth-orbit broadband — but the two look different overhead. Kuiper flies in three shells at roughly 590–630 km, a touch lower than the bulk of Starlink near 550 km, and the planned fleet of about 3,200 satellites is a fraction of Starlink's 10,000-plus. The live status panel above pulls the current active, orbit-raising and deorbiting counts straight from tracking data.
For observers, the key difference is brightness. Amazon designed Kuiper satellites with brightness mitigation — a dielectric mirror film and sun-shading meant to keep them dimmer than early Starlink units and below the naked-eye threshold of about magnitude 7. In practice that usually means binoculars, though a freshly launched cluster, or the occasional mirror-like flare, can briefly flash to naked-eye visibility in a dark twilight sky. The best window is the hour or two after dusk or before dawn, when the satellites still catch sunlight but your sky has gone dark.
What you're looking for is a steady, un-blinking point of light tracking smoothly across the sky over several minutes — anything flashing is an aircraft, not a satellite. Right after a launch the new batch can appear as a loose line of lights, the "train," before it spreads out over the following days. Deployment moved from prototypes to production launches in 2025, and the cadence is climbing toward Amazon's FCC milestone to orbit roughly half the constellation by mid-2026 — so passes will only become more frequent.
Project Kuiper is Amazon's satellite internet constellation, rebranded as Amazon Leo in November 2025. It's a direct Starlink competitor targeting homes, businesses, airlines, and enterprise customers globally with broadband from low Earth orbit. Amazon received FCC approval in 2020, committed over $10 billion to the project, and began launching production satellites in April 2025. Under its FCC licence, service begins once the first 578 satellites are in orbit; Amazon has guided to beta service in select markets in late 2026, with broader commercial rollout expected in 2027.
Yes. Amazon Leo is the current name for Project Kuiper — Amazon rebranded the constellation on 13 November 2025. The satellites, the technology and the 3,236-satellite plan are unchanged; only the name is new. Missions flown before that date still use the original "Kuiper" naming (KA-01, KA-02, and so on).
OrbitalNodes is currently tracking hundreds of Amazon Leo satellites in orbit, deployed across roughly a dozen missions since production launches began in April 2025 — including a record-breaking Ariane 6 batch in June 2026. That makes it one of the largest constellations in orbit, but still short of the 1,618 satellites — half the planned 3,236-satellite constellation — the FCC required by July 2026, so Amazon has requested a deadline extension. The count above updates live from tracking data, so it is always current.
Kuiper satellites are faint — around magnitude 5, near the limit of naked-eye visibility in dark skies. They're much dimmer than the ISS or Tiangong, comparable to the faintest stars visible without optical aid. During twilight when they catch sunlight they may be briefly visible from dark locations. Binoculars make them significantly easier to track. OrbitalNodes shows predicted magnitude for each pass.
Starlink has a massive head start — more than 10,000 operational satellites versus Kuiper's growing early-stage constellation. Technically, Kuiper orbits slightly higher (590-630km vs 550km) and uses three orbital shells at different inclinations. Kuiper leverages Amazon's AWS infrastructure and retail distribution. Both target satellite broadband but Kuiper is also pitching airlines (JetBlue signed up) and enterprise via AWS cloud integration.
Kuiper uses three orbital shells: 1,156 satellites at 590km in 33.0° inclination orbits, 1,296 satellites at 610km in 42.0° inclination optimised for mid-latitude regions, and 784 satellites at 630km in 51.9° inclination covering higher latitudes. This multi-shell architecture covers most of Earth's population with the minimum total satellite count.
Amazon requested an extension of the July 2026 FCC deadline that required 1,618 satellites in orbit by that date. Amazon has requested an extension — reaching 1,618 by the original deadline would require an extremely aggressive launch cadence not achievable in the available window. The FCC extension request is pending. Full deployment of 3,236 satellites is required by 2029 under the original licence terms.
At 3,236 satellites Kuiper will add meaningfully to LEO crowding. Individual satellites at magnitude 5 are fainter than Starlinks but collectively they increase sky brightness and astrophotography interference. Amazon has not published brightness mitigation plans. A study found Amazon Leo satellites create streaks in astronomical images comparable to early Starlink. This is an active concern in the astronomy community.
OrbitalNodes fetches live TLE data for all tracked Amazon Leo satellites and propagates orbits using the SGP4 algorithm — the same method used by space agencies worldwide. The constellation counter shows how many are above your local horizon right now. New satellites are added to the tracker within hours of their TLE data appearing in public catalogs after each launch.
The orbital mirror Earendil-1 will join satellites like Amazon Leo in low Earth orbit in 2026. SpaceX's 1M satellite plan and the night sky — OrbitalSolar.ai →