ASTS falls after BlueBird 7 launches into incorrect orbit
AST Space Mobile Blue Origin’s stock price fell 13% in pre-market trading on Monday after the space internet company announced that its Bluebird 7 satellite aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn vehicle was misplaced and will no longer be deorbited.
“During the New Glenn 3 mission, Bluebird 7 was placed in a lower-than-planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle. The satellite was separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, but the altitude was too low for the onboard thruster technology to sustain operations, so it was removed from orbit. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered through the company’s insurance policy,” the company said in a press release.
BlueBird 7, launched on Sunday, April 19, will be AST SpaceMobile’s eighth satellite to deploy into low Earth orbit, racing to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink to install the first constellation of satellites capable of providing 5G connectivity anywhere in the world. The company continues to aim to have about 45 satellites in orbit by the end of the year. (Incidentally, SpaceX currently has more than 9,500 satellites deployed since 2019, but ASTS’ network will rely on fewer than 100 larger, more sophisticated satellites that individually collect signals more efficiently than Starlink’s mega-constellation model.)
The failure of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket, New Glenn, was blamed on a misplaced launch vehicle. The cost of the satellite will be recovered under ASTS SpaceMobile’s insurance policy.
For Blue Origin itself, the mission brought great hope, as it successfully reused one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time ever, according to TechCrunch. Separately, Amazon, Bezos’ flagship company and the source of much of his wealth, announced last week that it would acquire Globalstar with the aim of entering direct competition for devices starting in 2028.
