19 April 2026 In 2018, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket suffered a second-stage malfunction during its third flight. This led to the launch of the payload into an abnormal orbit, from which it is impossible to resume work.
New Glenn started from the starting complex 36 Space Force at Cape Canaveral. The countdown was delayed due to an unknown technical problem, but the launch was successful. The payload is the BlueBird satellite 7 of the AST SpaceMobile company — was to be deployed in approx 75 minutes after the start, however, an hour after the planned separation, Blue Origin announced, що супутник виведений на початкову паркувальну орбіту. The company promised to provide more detailed information after assessing the incident. AST SpaceMobile announced nearly seven hours after launch, that the orbit is too low to recover with the satellite's electric propulsion.
For reference: AST SpaceMobile is an American company, which creates the world's first space-based cellular network (4G/5G) for smartphones. It allows you to connect directly to satellites in remote areas, where there is no ground cover, without special equipment. The company works with such partners, as AT&T, Vodafone and Rakuten.
BlueBird 7 mass 6100 kg is equipped with a phased array antenna, which in the unfolded state has an area of more than 220 square meters. It is used to provide broadband directly to smartphones (D2D). AST SpaceMobile planned to launch 45-60 satellites this year for its D2D constellation. Despite the unsuccessful launch, the company said, which in the future intends to carry out one or two launches per month until the end of the year and have 45 satellites in orbit. As of today, AST SpaceMobile has not provided information on that, how it plans to launch these satellites, while New Glenn, perhaps, will be decommissioned for several months.
Source: https://spacenews.com