AST SpaceMobile is now unfurling its first batch of commercial satellites in Earth’s orbit amid heightened competition with SpaceX’s cellular Starlink tech.
As PCMag reports, AST SpaceMobile CEO Abel Avellan tweeted the news alongside an image taken from one of the company’s “BlueBird” satellites. “The first BlueBird is getting ready to operate,” he wrote. Last month, the Texas-based company successfully launched all five BlueBird satellites into space, with the goal of delivering high-speed internet to unmodified smartphones on the ground.
The satellites stand out as the world’s largest communications array—or what’s essentially a 700-square-foot antenna panel. BlueBirds were tightly packed for rocket travel when they launched into Earth’s orbit. But now AST is unfurling them as they circle the Earth in low orbit.
According to Avellan, the company is also ahead of schedule. “At 700 sq ft in area, our BlueBirds are the largest-ever commercial communications arrays in low Earth orbit, specially designed for space-based cellular broadband to everyday smartphones – Size matters!” he said.
The unfolding paves the way for the company to start initial testing of the satellite equipment. The goal is to kick off a beta test of the satellites’ cellular capabilities with AT&T and Verizon —two of AST’s major partners— possibly as soon as December.
But for now, the FCC has only granted AST SpaceMobile a limited license to monitor and control the BlueBird fleet. The company still needs to secure regulatory approval from the FCC to beta test and commercially operate the satellites for beaming data to unmodified consumer phones.
The other issue is that AST SpaceMobile needs to launch dozens, if not hundreds, more BlueBirds to offer robust satellite coverage. That’s because the first five BlueBird satellites can only offer two 15-minute windows of communication coverage for each day in the US to start.
Still, AST says its next-generation BlueBird satellites will be three times larger while offering 10 times more capacity. But the company’s plans for the satellite network could face complaints from astronomers worried the BlueBird satellites will reflect too much light in the night sky and interfere with their research.
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