AST SpaceMobile <\/b>plans to file an insurance claim for the BlueBird 7 satellite it will lose after a New Glenn vehicle placed it into the wrong orbit on Sunday. <\/p>\n
Blue Origin launched a BlueBird 7 satellite for AST SpaceMobile from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station taking off at 7:25 a.m. EDT. The mission lifted off as expected, and Blue Origin successfully recovered the first stage booster. <\/p>\n
But New Glenn\u2019s upper stage did not perform as expected. On Sunday afternoon, AST SpaceMobile said BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will be de-orbited,\u201d AST SpaceMobile said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a Monday statement that one of the BE-3U engines did not perform as expected on the second burn. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn\u2019t deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects. Early data suggest that on our second GS2 burn, one of the BE-3U engines didn\u2019t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit,\u201d Limp said. <\/p>\n
A mishap investigation is underway, the FAA confirmed to Via Satellite<\/i>. As standard with FAA mishap investigations, the rocket is grounded until the FAA determines that \u201cany system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety.\u202f\u201d <\/p>\n
This was just the third launch of Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn vehicle and its first mission for a commercial customer after its debut in January 2025, and NASA mission in November. It is a setback for the launcher as it works to reach a more regular cadence with the vehicle. <\/p>\n
For AST SpaceMobile, the mission lost the second of its upgraded BlueBird satellites. BlueBird-6 recently successfully unfurled its array in space. ASTSpaceMobile said it expects the cost of the satellite to be recovered under its insurance policy.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s stock dipped 6% on Monday after the failure. <\/p>\n
The company\u2019s stated plan is targeting 45 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026, with a launch \u201cevery one to two months on average\u201d as it builds a network to provide broadband connectivity from space. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AST SpaceMobile plans to file an insurance claim for the BlueBird 7 satellite it will lose after a New Glenn vehicle placed it into the wrong orbit on Sunday. Blue Origin launched a BlueBird 7 satellite for AST SpaceMobile from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station taking off at 7:25 a.m. EDT. The mission lifted off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}