5 giant Bluebird smartphone satellites launched for AST SpaceMobile

Science: The first five commercial AST SpaceMobile satellites arrived in orbit. The huge spacecraft, called Bluebirds, took off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today (Sept. 12) at 4:52 a.m. ET (0852 GMT). The Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth about 7.5 minutes later and landed vertically at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. This was the 13th launch and landing of this particular launch vehicle, according to SpaceX mission data. The Falcon 9 upper stage launched the Bluebird satellites into low Earth orbit as planned and was expected to deploy them within 14 minutes, about 54 minutes after launch.

Each Bluebird carries a communications antenna that, when deployed, covers an area of ​​64 square meters — the largest antenna of its type ever deployed on a commercial spacecraft. In fact, this record has been broken by five Blackbirds weighing 1,500 kilograms. That record was set by AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker 3 prototype, launched into orbit on a Falcon 9 in September 2022. But the Bluebirds are operational satellites, founding members of a commercial constellation designed to deliver services directly to cell phones.