NewSpace AtlasSearch
Five finished BlueBird satellites, stowed with their gold-wrapped antenna arrays folded, on the factory floor at AST SpaceMobile's Midland, Texas site
Image: AST SpaceMobile

BlueBird (next generation)

by AST SpaceMobile · Satellite-to-phone service

AST SpaceMobile's current satellite, with a folding antenna array of nearly 2,400 square feet that talks directly to unmodified phones on the ground.

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Why it matters

Phones lose service across most of the planet's land and all of its oceans. A satellite that works with the phone already in your pocket, through your existing carrier, could close those gaps for calls, texts and data without new hardware.

How the technology works

Each satellite unfolds a huge phased-array antenna in low Earth orbit. The size lets it pick up a phone's weak signal from hundreds of kilometers away.

AST says a custom chip, the AST5000, gives each satellite 10 GHz of processing bandwidth and more than 2,000 coverage cells, with peak speeds above 150 Mbps per cell. Traffic is routed through ground gateways into partner carriers' networks.

Sources

  1. AST SpaceMobile
  2. AST SpaceMobile

Updated Oct 22, 2026 · How we source facts · Suggest a correction