A release from AST SpaceMobile shared that BlueBird 6 has completed final assembly and testing and is ready for flight. On October 12, BlueBird 7 will head to India aboard an Antonov large cargo plane.
As a result AST SpaceMobile is kicking off their next-gen launch campaign:
BlueBird 7 is expected to ship to the Cape Canaveral launch site in October.
The BlueBirds 8-16 are in various stages of production, with launches planned every 1-2 months on average during 2025 and 2026. The company is on schedule to complete 40 phased arrays by early 2026, bringing them to BlueBird 46.
The company is expecting 45-60 satellites in orbit by year-end 2026. As a result of this they have partnered with 50+ mobile network operators serving nearly 3 billion subscribers, supported by a flexible spectrum strategy blending their own licensed spectrum with partner spectrum.
These BlueBirds will be the largest commercial satellites ever deployed in LEO – each featuring a 2,400 sq ft phased array with true direct-to-cell broadband, capable of up to 10,000 MHz of processing bandwidth and peak speeds of 120 Mbps per cell.