Amid a growing launch crunch, AST SpaceMobile ($ASTS) is building its own ride to space.
On Friday, the company announced it is building Blacklift, a 20-ton rocket designed to launch its BlueBird D2D satcom constellation to LEO.
“The Blacklift rocket is the springboard to significantly expand our total addressable market, providing AST SpaceMobile with regular unconstrained access to orbit and providing for most favorable owners’ economics in the industry,” Abel Avellan, AST SpaceMobile’s founder, chairman, and CEO said in a statement.
Rocket details: Blackliftis targeting a first flight in late 2028—an incredibly aggressive timeline to get a new launch vehicle up and running. Until then, it will continue to rely on external launch providers.
The rocket will be powered by Firefly Aerospace’s Miranda and Vira engines.
- Firefly will sell AST SpaceMobile 36 engines for the first three rockets under a $1.3B contract.
- Firefly will also provide engineering support for three years.
- After that, AST SpaceMobile will buy the license to build both engines itself at a new planned manufacturing facility.
Owning the ride: The new rocket could potentially benefit AST SpaceMobile in the battle of the broadbands, especially as access to commercial launch becomes more constrained with the expected end of SpaceX’s commercial Falcon 9 and rideshare flights.
- SpaceX’s Starlink—a top competitor of AST SpaceMobile’s planned BlueBird constellation—already has in-house access to launch through the company’s Falcon 9 and Starship rockets.
- The addition of Blacklift to AST SpaceMobile’s portfolio levels the playing field—if the rocket can actually be quickly and successfully built.
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Unless you were living under a (space) rock, you will have heard that in the last month a Russian military satellite, Kosmos 2612, closed to within a few hundred meters of ICEYE-X36—an ICEYE radar satellite that’s been sharing data with Ukraine since the war began in 2022. For the better part of a day, Kosmos 2612 conducted what appears to be a sophisticated characterization mission before withdrawing. The US has since called the approach consistent with an on-orbit weapons operation, as the satellite was operating “dangerously close” to X36, according to US undersecretary of state Thomas DiNanno.
Most commenters focused on whether the operation was dangerous and irresponsible, which frankly states the blindingly obvious. They paid little attention to the more crucial matter: Why would Russia use five satellites for a mission that took five months and hundreds of m/s of propellant to perform?
While Russia’s satellite operation could be read as a capability demonstration, Moscow’s ability to do these types of missions has never been in doubt by any serious military analyst. Furthermore, an approach of this kind is not consistent with Russia’s standard provocation doctrine, which favours low-cost, high-payoff attacks such as hacking over overt action. By contrast, this RPO mission required that Russia commit to a significant—and visible—investment in staffing, satellite lifetime, and intelligence analysis. The question, then, is why they bothered approaching X36 at all?
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