\u201cWe\u2019re not doing this thing because we want to be in the launch business. We want this because we have so much demand of our satellites and, as you have seen it, we cannot get enough launches on time,\u201d Abel Avellan, chief executive of AST SpaceMobile, said at the event.<\/p>\n
Blacklift, with a payload capacity of 20 tons to low Earth orbit, will be able to carry up to five BlueBird satellites per launch. The vehicle will be used exclusively for AST\u2019s satellites, with a goal of launching twice a month.<\/p>\n
Although the company billed the event as an unveiling, the company showed no hardware beyond videos of engines from Firefly Aerospace that AST is acquiring for Blacklift and animations of the vehicle itself. Much of the event focused on the BlueBird satellites, such as a tour of the Midland, Texas, factory where the company builds those spacecraft.<\/p>\n
The company did provide a few technical details about the rocket. Blacklift will be a three-stage rocket, using seven of Firefly\u2019s Miranda engines in its first stage, two Firefly Vira engines in the second stage and one Vira engine in the third stage. That is a nontraditional approach in a launch market where most vehicles optimized for low Earth orbit payloads use only two stages.<\/p>\n
Avellan said the three-stage approach is tied to plans to recover and reuse the first stage. \u201cWhen you have three stages, the first stage will go up not that much and will come back down very easily, compared of going back very high and then trying to maneuver that back to Earth,\u201d he said. However, existing reusable rockets such as Falcon 9 and New Glenn, and those in development by Relativity Space, Rocket Lab and Stoke Space, use two-stage designs.<\/p>\n
Blacklift will also entirely use carbon composite materials, which he said comes from the company\u2019s experience using those materials on its spacecraft as well as Firefly\u2019s experience from its vehicles. Composites, he said, reduce the vehicle\u2019s dry mass by 40% compared to metallic structures.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most notable aspect of Blacklift is the vehicle\u2019s schedule, which calls for a first flight in late 2028. AST argues that its decision to use Firefly engines, rather than develop its own, makes that schedule feasible.<\/p>\n
\u201cA typical design cycle of a rocket could be over a decade. Eighty percent of that is on the engine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re starting this program on third base,\u201d he added. \u201cWe bypass 10 years of engineering and R&D.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"AST](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/videoframe_3845600.png\")
A slide from an AST SpaceMobile presentation Nov. 12 that argued its Blacklift vehicle could be ready in two years. Credit: AST SpaceMobile<\/p>\n
In addition to buying the engines from Firefly, AST said in its presentation it was buying other components, from avionics to separation systems, from \u201cheritage suppliers,\u201d although Avellan said in his talk that the company would be \u201c95% vertically integrated\u201d on the rocket. He said the company is starting to make composite tanks at its Midland factory using existing tools, with 10 tanks completed by January for testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat remains is integration, stage testing, and licensing: exactly what the plan is built around,\u201d the company stated in a slide.<\/p>\n
However, it is not clear how well the company\u2019s experience with composite structures will translate to tanks. Rocket Lab, another company using carbon composites for launch vehicle structures, had a composite propellant tank built for the first stage of its Neutron rocket damaged in qualification testing in January<\/a>. In October, Rocket Lab reported another issue with the tanks<\/a>, causing it to delay the vehicle\u2019s first launch to sometime in 2027.<\/p>\n Another issue is where Blacklift will launch from. In a Nov. 9 earnings call, Avellan indicated that the vehicle would initially launch from the same pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, built for Northrop Grumman\u2019s Antares and being updated to support Firefly\u2019s Alpha and the joint Firefly\/Northrop Eclipse vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cOur first launches are going to be upgrades on existing launch, which Firefly already have prearranged for their Eclipse configuration,\u201d he said. \u201cWallops will require an upgrade that we can fit in the timeframe that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n He provided similar comments at the unveiling event. \u201cWe have a launch site, a site which is Wallops. It\u2019s the same place where Antares used to fly, and where the Eclipse from Firefly will fly, and that were upgrading that facility.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAntares heritage pad at Wallops, already being upgraded for Miranda engines,\u201d stated a slide in AST\u2019s presentation.<\/p>\n However, a spokesperson for the Virginia Spaceport Authority, which operates the commercial launch pads at Wallops, told SpaceNews Nov. 12 that while it has engaged in \u201cearly, preliminary conversations\u201d with AST about hosting Blacklift launches, those talks do not include Pad 0-A, the pad built for Antares.<\/p>\n The options available to AST at Wallops include renovating Pad 0-B, which is used for smaller solid-fuel rockets, or building a new pad. Either would be significantly more expensive and time-consuming than using Pad 0-A, as AST claims it can do.<\/p>\n The company did not disclose how much it plans to spend developing Blacklift beyond the $1.3 billion contract with Firefly that includes engines for the first three rockets, a license to allow AST to produce its own engines and engineering services.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 AST SpaceMobile executives expressed confidence in the company\u2019s ability to field a new reusable launch vehicle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-832959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}