Texas firm AST SpaceMobile has successfully launched its BlueBird 6 satellite. The company is known for building large arrays, and this one is no different. The next-generation satellite is roughly three times the size of its predecessors, making it the largest commercial satellite currently in Earth\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n
BlueBird 6 took off aboard India\u2019s LVM3 rocket on December 23 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center. With its next-generation constellation, AST SpaceMobile aims to rival SpaceX by creating the first space-based cellular broadband network for smartphone coverage. BlueBird 6 is the first of this new generation of satellites to reach space.<\/p>\n
AST\u2019s \u2018cellphone towers in space\u2019<\/p>\n
AST SpaceMobile launched BlueWalker 3, its first satellite, in September 2022. The large array was designed to test its orbital \u201ccellphone towers\u201d technology. In 2023, the company reached an impressive milestone, conducting the first 5G phone call from space using BlueWalker 3.<\/p>\n
Since then, AST SpaceMobile has launched six BlueBird satellites, including the latest launch in December. BlueBird 6 is the largest to date. BlueBird is designed to support 10 gigahertz of bandwidth and speeds of 120 megabytes per second for a mobile device.<\/p>\n
According to a Gizmodo\u00a0report<\/a>, BlueBird 1\u2019s array is the size of a tennis court, measuring 693 square feet (about 64 square meters). Once the array was fully unfurled, the satellite\u2019s brightness increased by roughly 2 magnitudes, making it outshine most objects in the night sky.<\/p>\n Now, BlueBird 6 is roughly three times larger. With its array unfurled, it will measure 2,400 square feet (223 square meters), making it the largest satellite in space.<\/p>\n Concerns over AST SpaceMobile\u2019s satellites<\/p>\n 2026 is set to be a big year for AST SpaceMobile. The company reportedly plans to launch 45-60 more satellites by the end of the upcoming year. That will allow it to offer 5G data across the US, as well as some other regions.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t come close to SpaceX\u2019s staggering Starlink constellation, which currently has more than 9,000 satellites in orbit. However, AST\u2019s satellites are much larger, allowing a single satellite to provide more coverage.<\/p>\n Astronomers have flagged the size of AST\u2019s satellite arrays as an issue. Ever since SpaceX started lifting thousands of Starlink satellites into orbit in 2019, scientists have decried the bright satellites\u2019 impact on astronomical observations.<\/p>\n In a\u00a02022 interview<\/a>\u00a0with IE, University of Regina astronomer Dr. Samantha Lawler said we are \u201cright on the edge\u201d of a destructive scenario known as Kessler Syndrome. <\/p>\n If this happens, it would feel like we were \u201cinside a snow globe within a couple of hours of sunrise or sunset,\u201d and any efforts to fix the problem would be comparable to \u201ccollecting bullets.\u201d NASA, meanwhile,\u00a0has previously warned<\/a>\u00a0that satellites could impede its ability to detect potentially hazardous asteroids headed toward Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas firm AST SpaceMobile has successfully launched its BlueBird 6 satellite. The company is known for building large…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[3438,112705,61,60,11830,82,247,112706],"class_list":{"0":"post-217043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-aerospace","9":"tag-communication-satellite","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-satellites","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-starlink-rival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}