A giant cell tower will go into space this weekend

The Blue Origin rocket launch scheduled for this weekend is a bit of a big deal. Success would spell the end of SpaceX’s monopoly on reusable orbital launch vehicles, setting up a three-way race to make the “no service” indicator on your phone disappear forever.

On Sunday morning, Jeff Bezos’ massive New Glenn rocket is scheduled to lift off with the first stage booster that launched and landed on the program’s second mission last November. It’s a crucial test, because cost-effective reuse of the booster is what made SpaceX’s Falcon 9 so dominant.

Amazon desperately needs its own reusable rocket to speed up Leo launches. Without one, it was only able to launch 241 Leo satellites, putting it well behind schedule. In the same 12-month time period, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was able to deploy more than 1,500 satellites in the Starlink constellation.

Sunday’s mission will carry AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite into low Earth orbit. Instead of covering the area with thousands of small satellites like Amazon and SpaceX, AST’s plan is to deploy a smaller number of more powerful satellites. The Bluebird 7 features a massive 2,400-square-foot phased array antenna, making it the largest commercial communications array ever deployed in low Earth orbit. It’s essentially a cell tower in space, and will be the second of the company’s next-generation “Block 2” satellites to be launched.

BlueBird 7 is designed to bring 4G and 5G broadband, at speeds exceeding 120Mbps, to the phones we already carry. AST plans to acquire Launching 45 to 60 satellites by the end of 2026. When AST turns on its service sometime this year, it will be in direct competition with Starlink’s direct-to-cell service, which already works with T-Mobile in the US, and Globalstar, the satellite network acquired by Amazon that keeps iPhones and Apple Watches connected in dead zones.