The LVM3 deployed BlueBird 6 about 324 miles (521 kilometers) above Earth<\/a> 15.5 minutes after launch as planned.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \n India’s LVM3 rocket on the pad ahead of the successful Dec. 23, 2025 launch of the BlueBird 6 satellite for AST SpaceMobile. (Image credit: ISRO)<\/p>\n AST SpaceMobile is building a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit<\/a> (LEO) that beam broadband service directly to standard smartphones on the ground.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The company has now launched six operational satellites to orbit, five of them aboard a single SpaceX<\/a> Falcon 9 rocket in September 2024<\/a>. Those previous spacecraft, BlueBirds 1 through 5, feature 693-square-foot (64.4 square meters) communication arrays \u2014 the largest ever unfurled in LEO.<\/p>\n BlueBird 6 will break that record, and by a healthy margin. It’s the first of AST SpaceMobile’s next-generation BlueBirds, whose arrays cover nearly 2,400 square feet (223 square meters) apiece.<\/p>\n Tuesday’s liftoff was the ninth overall for the three-stage, 143-foot-tall (43.5 m) LVM3, which is India’s most powerful rocket. It debuted in December 2014 and has a 100% success rate to date.<\/p>\n BlueBird 6, which tips the scales at about 13,450 pounds (6,100 kilograms), was the heaviest payload that the LVM3 has ever hauled to LEO, according to<\/a> the Indian Space Research Organisation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11 p.m. ET on Dec. 23 with news of successful launch and satellite deployment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Indian rocket launched the record-breaking BlueBird 6 smartphone satellite to orbit on Tuesday night (Dec. 23). BlueBird…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-367110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/eKjGF9ZzPdntfW8AqKbYKV.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n