First five commercial AST SpaceMobile satellites successfully deployed

AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS, WKN: A3CL8W) achieved an important milestone in its efforts to establish a comprehensive network of low-Earth orbit satellites last week, with the successful deployment of five BlueBirds, as AST SpaceMobile’s telecommunications satellites are called. This marks the successful completion of the launch phase of these satellites.

One BlueBird satellite from AST SpaceMobile covers more than 5,600 cells, each of which is supplied with the corresponding telephone signals by a radio mast on the ground. The successful launch and subsequent smooth deployment of the satellites in low-Earth orbit thus represents the essential prerequisite for the development and expansion of the comprehensive network planned by AST SpaceMobile. The network will enable telephone calls via satellite from any standard mobile phone and thus make dead spots a thing of the past.

AST SpaceMobile completed the deployment of the five BlueBirds six weeks ahead of schedule. Now the satellites are being prepared for their two main tasks. These are the aforementioned commercial broadband network and the execution of US government tasks.

The successful deployment of the BlueBirds is an important event for the company, because never before have such large commercial communication systems been deployed and positioned in low Earth orbit. The fact that the scheduled timetable was undercut by six weeks is an additional success that will also have a monetary impact, because it is now expected that the planned services from space can be launched earlier.

New, even larger satellites are already being planned and prepared.

The successful deployment of the five satellites is just the beginning. More BlueBirds will follow to gradually build a network in space that will enable uninterrupted, high-quality phone calls worldwide. At the same time, AST SpaceMobile is already working on developing the next generation of these satellites.

They will have a capacity ten times greater than that of the BlueBirds that have now been successfully placed in space. These satellites will offer customers and partners such as AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone even greater advantages than the current BlueBirds already do.

The construction of a network in space that provides 100% coverage of the USA is therefore an important first step in the expansion plan. This is quite ambitious in itself, since at least the US states of Alaska and Hawaii are very far away from the other 48 core states of the country. However, the new technology will be of particular benefit to those parts of the country that have not yet been adequately covered, or not at all.

This approach is technically possible thanks to large phased array antennas. The company’s technology is extremely advanced and protected by a total of 3,450 patents and patent applications. The new technology not only offers advantages to Americans living in Alaska or other remote parts of the country. The US government is also very interested in the project and has since become a customer of AST SpaceMobile, because the innovative technology also offers secure, reliable and, above all, scalable connectivity to support various government missions.