Webcast: AST SpaceMobile BlueBird 8-10 Mission Live Launch - YouTube
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SpaceX will launch three giant direct-to-cell satellites early Wednesday morning (June 17), and you can watch the action live.A Falcon 9 rocket topped with three of AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday, during a 96-minute window that opens at 2:39 a.m. EDT (0639 GMT).You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of AST SpaceMobile, or directly via the Texas-based company.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 8, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)AST SpaceMobile is building a constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) that beams internet service directly to cell phones. The company has launched seven spacecraft to date, most recently on April 19, when BlueBird 7 took to the skies on the third-ever flight of Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket.Things didn't go according to plan that day, however: New Glenn deployed BlueBird 7 in the wrong orbit after suffering an anomaly, and the satellite was lost.BlueBird 7 was the second of AST SpaceMobile's "next-generation" spacecraft to launch, after BlueBird 6, which reached LEO successfully atop an Indian LVM3 rocket in December 2025.The next-gen satellites have antennas that cover nearly 2,400 square feet (223 square meters) when unfurled — that's larger than any other commercial communications arrays ever deployed in space. (The original BlueBirds were no slouches in this department; their arrays covered 693 square feet, or 64.4 square meters).Wednesday morning's liftoff will send BlueBird 8, BlueBird 9 and BlueBird 10 aloft, quadrupling the number of next-gen satellites in LEO."Our upcoming launch marks another important milestone as we continue advancing the deployment of our space-based cellular broadband network," Scott Wisniewski, president of AST SpaceMobile, said in a June 9 statement."Each BlueBird satellite launched expands our ability to support seamless space-based broadband mobile connectivity directly to everyday smartphones," he added.
