Texas startup AST SpaceMobile has announced its plan to launch 45 to 60 satellites by 2026, becoming a worthy competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite group in the creation of space broadband networks.
The company announced its second-quarter earnings on Monday, reporting that it has $1.5 billion on its balance sheet to finance the deployment of dozens of its satellites, according to CNBC. The next day, AST SpaceMobile’s shares soared more than 10% on the prospect of the company providing coverage across the US, as well as Europe, Japan, and other key markets.
AST SpaceMobile launched its first satellite, BlueWalker 3, in September 2022 to test its long-term plan to create a space-based broadband network that can be accessed directly from mobile phones. A year later, the company used its prototype satellite to make the first 5G call from space to a regular Samsung Galaxy S22. Since then, AST has launched five more satellites called BlueBird and plans to launch another 243 satellites into orbit.
In order to expand its network of orbital cell towers, AST plans to conduct four more launches by the end of March 2026. “We have planned launches into orbit on average once every one to two months throughout 2025 and 2026,” Abel Avelán, founder and CEO of AST SpaceMobile, said in a statement.
Thanks to this significant acceleration, AST is gradually catching up with industry leader SpaceX. Of course, both companies are engaged in fierce disputes over who has the right to clutter low Earth orbit with huge satellite constellations. Last month, SpaceX sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission expressing concern that AST SpaceMobile poses a threat to the stability of low Earth orbit.
To be fair, BlueWalker 3 was extremely large, with an array the size of a tennis court that stretched 693 square feet when the satellite was fully deployed. However, SpaceX satellites do not have a particularly good reputation. Starlinks are known to interfere with astronomical observations of space, despite some efforts by the company to mitigate this problem.
The situation will only get worse. SpaceX plans to launch thousands more of its Starlink satellites, and AST’s second-generation BlueBird satellites are three times larger than the first batch. There are other companies hoping to join in on the action, such as Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which now has over 100 satellites in orbit. Starlink may soon lose its monopoly on low Earth orbit as more and more satellites fill the sky.
