Astronomers around the world feared this hour, but it has come: the largest communication satellite — BlueBird 6 from AST SpaceMobile — has been launched into Earth's orbit. Its antenna area reaches 223 m², making the device the brightest artificial interference to terrestrial astronomy.
The visible brightness of BlueBird 6 will reach the luminosity of a full moon, and this is just the first of 60 planned launches. But what sacrifices won’t be made for cellular communication in all the bear corners of the Earth?
The launch took place on December 24 at 08:55 AM local time from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in southern India aboard the LVM3 rocket of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). A live stream on YouTube confirmed that the spacecraft reached low Earth orbit in about 16 minutes. For India's ISRO, this was a record — it was the largest payload for the LVM3 rocket, weighing up to 6.5 tons.
So far, AST SpaceMobile has launched only five first-generation satellites into Earth's orbit, each with an antenna array of 65 m². Since then, they have shone in the night sky like first-magnitude stars, causing inconvenience for astronomers observing from the planet.
The new satellite modification has four times the antenna area, which will seriously complicate scientific work not only for optical astronomy but also for radio astronomy. And next year, AST SpaceMobile plans to launch up to 60 more such devices!
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