An Indian rocket launched the record-breaking BlueBird 6 smartphone satellite to orbit on Tuesday night (Dec. 23). BlueBird 6, built by Texas company AST SpaceMobile, lifted off atop an LVM3 rocket from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre Tuesday at 10:25 p.m. EST (0325 GMT and 8:55 a.m. India Standard Time on Dec. 24). The LVM3 deployed BlueBird 6 about 324 miles (521 kilometers) above Earth 15.5 minutes after launch as planned. AST SpaceMobile is building a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) that beam broadband service directly to standard smartphones on the ground. The company has now launched six operational satellites to orbit, five of them aboard a single SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in September 2024. Those previous spacecraft, BlueBirds 1 through 5, feature 693-square-foot (64.4 square meters) communication arrays — the largest ever unfurled in LEO.

Full report : AST launches its largest-ever satellite from India, hosting the BlueBird Block-2, the first in a series of deployments to challenge SpaceX in satellite internet.