08.12.25
Delays, delays…
AST SpaceMobile did their best on today’s call to obfuscate the delays in their launch schedule, which has already shifted by several months since the company’s last quarterly update in May. Back in May the company’s CEO stated that “we…are now able to announce our plans to support five scheduled orbital launches over the next six to nine months” (i.e. by Nov-Feb) but now the company merely claims that it is “anticipating at least five orbital launches by end of Q1 2026.”
And this demonstrates that the bizarre and contradictory FCC submission in late July saying the company anticipated launching “up to 20 satellites…through the end of this year” appears to have just been nonsense inserted by the management at the last moment, presumably to pump the stock further, as I guessed at the time.
In fact, the FCC certainly will be annoyed by the fact that AST merely expects FM1 will “be ready to ship in August 2025″, indicating that the satellite still isn’t ready for shipment as of today. Again the company obfuscated by adding a picture on slide 6 of the presentation of a “Block 2 Bluebird encapsulated” without indicating that this was actually FM1 (as in the picture above showing FM1 in the thermal vacuum chamber) instead of simply a ground test model. Of course if it was FM1, you can guarantee that AST would have wanted to point that out.
But what’s more significant is that today’s announcement only refers to AST being “on target to complete 40 satellites equivalent of microns by early 2026″ with no mention of how many satellites will be completed by that time. Previously AST had said they were “on track with satellite manufacturing of 40 Block 2 BlueBird satellites”. That’s hardly surprising, because a significant redesign is needed to cut the mass from 5850kg to 4200kg for FM3 and subsequent satellites, and ISRO has already pointed out that FM1 has been experiencing “developmental issues”.
However, by avoiding mentioning the number of satellites they plan to complete, AST clearly hoped to avoid highlighting how few are actually going to be launched on the first five launches through next March. Unfortunately, the presentation gave the game away, when it confirmed that the eight sets of BB2 microns built to date are enough for four launches. That confirms my expectations that after FM1, the FM2 launch will be standalone on F9 and then there will be three satellites on each of the next two Falcon 9 launches. In fact the chart on slide 7 clearly shows AST’s entire planned schedule of 13 launches through the end of 2026, although given the track record of continued delays, it is hard to have any confidence in this actually being met.
My update to this chart above adds actual launch dates to the satellite shipment dates, with launch 5 being at the end of Q1 2026 as the company hopes, and assuming one more month of slip in launches after that. And then adding in the fact that New Glenn is not expected to be available for other commercial launches, including AST, until flight 6 or later, in late summer 2026 at the earliest. Again being generous to the company, I’ve assumed they might get two New Glenn launches in before the end of 2026. And despite trying to correct himself to say “6-8 satellites” per launch, AST’s CEO effectively confirmed that there will most likely be only 6 satellites per New Glenn.
Bizarrely, AST’s CEO didn’t even mention the Falcon 9 launches, as he tied himself in knots, claiming that the company would build 6 satellites per month and then have a launch every 1-2 months. Of course, there’s no point in building 6 satellites per month (let alone 40 sets of microns by early 2026) if you can only launch 3 satellites per launch on the only rocket you have access to for the next year.
So now you can see that this is how AST plans to get to 45-60 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026, which in fact means ~41 BB2s plus the existing 5 BB1s. Of course that only happens if the company somehow avoids the delays that it has consistently reported every quarter and FM1 works as planned. And the supposed intermittent service at the end of 2025 will be utterly pointless, with at most two more satellites in orbit, and most likely one or both of those not even being operational.
EDIT (8/12): It seems likely that AST’s assertions in the headline of the business update that the company is “Preparing to deploy nationwide intermittent service in the United States by the end of 2025, followed by the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada in Q1 2026″ actually represents the company’s hopes for when SCS approval might be received, not when any sort of service will actually be provided to the public. Or taken more literally, AST may claim this phrase means that “by the end of 2025″ the company will start “preparing to deploy…service” but that does not mean the company is currently preparing for a service to be deployed by the end of 2025.
There won’t be 25 satellites in orbit until July 2026 at the earliest, and it will be Sept-Oct 2026 before these are operational, and capable of generating revenues. Incidentally it was funny to hear the CFO (mistakenly?) claim that 25 satellites will generate positive operating cash flows, when the company’s 10-Q is careful not to include the word positive, simply asserting that “we believe the operation of a constellation of 25 BB satellites will enable us to potentially generate cash flows from operating activities to further support the buildup of the remaining constellation”.
And finally, there won’t actually be even the barest level of continuous (operational) coverage for a few parts of the northern US until the first quarter of 2027 at the earliest. I’m sure AT&T are desperate to forget their CEO’s claims back in October 2022 that they chose AST because it was 18 months ahead of Starlink and T-Mobile.
