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New rocket, bigger bragging rights
AST SpaceMobile is lining up BlueBird 8, 9, and 10 for a June 17 launch aboard a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral. That’s not just a date on the calendar — it’s the next checkpoint in the company’s very ambitious plan to beam cellular broadband straight to standard smartphones from space.
Why investors are paying attention
The company says these newer satellites should deliver nearly double the peak data speeds of its first Block 1 BlueBird birds, which recently hit 98.9 Mbps on regular phones. In other words: this isn’t just “we launched something shiny,” it’s “we’re trying to make the shiny thing actually fast enough to matter.”
The partner parade matters too
ASTS says it has agreements with nearly 60 mobile network operators serving more than 3 billion subscribers worldwide. The big names in that mix include:
- AT&T
- Verizon
- Vodafone
- Alphabet
That matters because satellite connectivity is nice in theory, but partner networks are what turn it into a business instead of a science fair project.
The stock isn’t exactly partying
Shares were down a bit on Tuesday as risk-off vibes hit high-beta growth names. But zoom out, and ASTS is still sitting on a monster 12-month run. So the market’s current mood looks more like a breather than a total rethink — at least for now.
Big picture: if this launch goes smoothly, it’s another small-but-important nudge toward proving AST SpaceMobile can scale a space-based network without the whole thing turning into a very expensive PowerPoint.