Mid 2026 Satellite Mobile Internet Update: New Glenn Explosion Derails Amazon Leo & AST SpaceMobile

Añadido: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Last Thursday evening, the hopes of a Starlink competitor coming online anytime this year went kaboom. And it was a big kaboom indeed that is shaking up the entire space industry and particularly the futures for Amazon's LEO satellite constellation and ASD space mobile. We've got all the disturbing details.

[00:00:27]Hi, I'm Chris with the mobile internet resource center here to give you a satellite industry update because some major changes have happened in just the past week or two. First off, we have SpaceX got Starship back on the path and has begun resuming their Starship test flights. But their test flight was only partially successful and they are officially grounded by the FAA right now. That's bad for them. But even worse for everybody is Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket blew up on the pad in Florida, destroying not just the rocket, but substantially destroying the pad. This is going to be a huge setback for the New Glenn program, grounding the New Glenn program. And well, that's the major ride that ASD Space Mobile and Amazon Leo have been planning to use to get their constellations into orbit. And well, New Glenn is grounded for a very long time because of this. And also, meanwhile, the ULA Vulcan rocket is grounded because of solid rocket booster issues. So, that was one of the few other rides available to space. So, what was looking to be a very, very productive summer with a lot of launches towards these next generation constellations is grinding to a halt with all these rocket issues. What does this mean? What's going on? Why is the New Glenn so important? I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into that. So, New Glenn is a huge rocket from rocket company Blue Origin, which is also owned and founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame. So, that's kind of the connection of why Amazon is planning to use New Glenn for the bulk of their upcoming um Amazon Leo satellite constellation launches. And Blue Origin has been working slowly and steadily for years and years and years towards building this new Glenn rocket. It's new Glenn rocket is like the Falcon 9 designed to come back and land and be reused. This is going to be the second reusable rocket to enter commercial service but it is much much bigger than the Falcon 9. It can carry a lot more cargo to orbit. So it is a major leap forward in uh rocket launch capability which is essential for making these next generation huge satellite constellations economically viable. You need a way to get all those satellites up into space affordably and then well you don't want to throw away your rocket. You want to be able to land it, refuel it, reuse it and take it and you know keep keep the the the cadence going getting your satellites into orbit. So New Glenn is a really big deal and it has been slow to come to market. It was supposed to be fully ready years and years ago and well it's finally been ramping up and well they've showed a lot of promise. They over their second full flight they successfully launched a NASA probe to Mars landed their booster on their drone ship out in the ocean brought it back and had a completely picture perfect flight. So on their third flight uh just a few months ago they actually reused that booster and things were great. The booster performed perfectly, but then they had a problem with the second stage and actually lost the satellite they were launching, which was a satellite for ASD Space Mobile. But still, New Glenn was looking like they had almost figured out all their bugs worked out and they were actually set to start basically this week, beginning monthly cadence of launches with satellites queued up from Amazon LEO and ASD Space Mobile and even NASA missions to the moon, all lined up, ready to go for New Glenn. But last Thursday night during a regular engine test on the pad before they loaded on the cargo, something went wrong, terribly wrong, and there was a huge explosion that destroyed the rocket and destroyed a lot of the structures on the pad. You can see the video of things even collapsing and caving in as one of the biggest fireballs, you know, non- nuclear fireballs in history just made an artificial sunrise on the Florida coast. This is horrible news for the New Glenn program. Now, uh, Blue Origin has more New Glenn rockets ready to go, but without a pad that's they've got nowhere to launch them from, and rebuilding the pad is the biggest, hardest thing possible. A lot of space industry analysts say it would take at least 12 to 18 months to get New Glenn back on track and get the pad put back together.

[00:04:48]But we've actually now heard from Blue Origin CEO David Limp that they're aiming to act get things back on track by the end of this year. So that would require some really amazing fast work to get this pad rebuilt and then they've got to prove that they've solved whatever problem it was that caused um the new Glenn to blow up. So, this is going to be at least a six-month delay, if not much longer, for all things that were depending on launching on the new Glenn. Those things are are Amazon's LEO constellation was in particular depending on this. This the launch that was supposed to be happening this week was going to be taking up a huge batch of Amazon Leo satellites. that is now postponed and Amazon is now running out of ways to get their LEO constellation into orbit. Amazon has been under a tight deadline. According to their FCC license to deploy the LEO constellation, they are legally mandated to have 1600 LEO satellites in orbit by the end of July this year.

[00:05:57]That seemed plausible when they first filed for their license back in 2019, but well, they're running out of time and clearly they're nowhere close to getting that many satellites in orbit.

[00:06:08]And well, without a new Glenn to launch them, they're not going to get very many more launched this year. Now, Amazon has been trying to buy up launch capacity on every other launch provider they can find. Um they have bought every Atlas 5 in existence that was available to buy to launch their um Amazon Leo satellites and they've now completed uh seven of eight launches on um Atlas 5 launching Amazon Leo satellites and well once the eighth one launches in July there are no more Atlas 5s left they are out of production. The other rocket that ULA has moved on to the evolution of the Atlas 5 is the ULA Vulcan Centaur. That one is supposed to have been launching already launching uh 40 plus uh uh Amazon Leo satellites per launch. It hasn't launched any yet because it is currently grounded because even though it's had four successful launches so far for mostly for the government, it has had issues with its solid rocket boosters on almost every one of those launches. So, it is grounded while that issue is resolved indefinitely grounded.

[00:07:15]So, no Vulcan launches for at least the near-term future. And well, um, Amazon has been going to the European Space Agency's Aran 6, but they only launch a few times a year. And then the only other alternative to get into space is going to their arch rival and competitor, SpaceX, and booking rides on the Falcon. Now, the Falcon is a much smaller rocket, so it carries much fewer satellites into orbit per trip as the new Glenn or the Vulcan would have. And well, they're paying their competitor.

[00:07:46]And well, SpaceX just doesn't have much open time in their schedule to launch uh Amazon LEO satellites. So, this is a really big deal. There's currently really only ride to orbit that Amazon has is SpaceX. SpaceX's schedule is full. They've got Amazon has bought 10 Falcon rides in the near-term future, but that's not going to be enough to get the LEO constellation to the point it needs to be operable probably by the end of this year. So this is a major delay to Amazon's LEO constellation. The the other satellite constellation that was also depending on rides from New Glenn and Vulcan and well of course SpaceX is A Space Mobile. This is the satellite direct to cell constellation that is being funded by um invested in by a Verizon and AT&T. And instead of like broadband service to a big antenna, this is actually bringing regular satellite broadband to regular everyday existing phones. And Space Mobile does this with huge antennas on their satellites so they can actually reach to phones they say even indoors. So, it's really promising technology, but they've only have a few satellites in orbit, and they need to get to at least about 45 satellites before they can even begin to start having commercially viable service that they could turn on. And well, with New Glenn offline for a long time, Vulcan still stalled. Um, ASD Space Mobile is also now not going to be able to meet their targets of having service by the end of 2026. We'll have to see if they're able to pivot into other directions, but Space Mobile is not going to be able to get service out, which is frustrating for them because they've been showing off some amazing tech demos. They recently showed a video of getting almost 100 megabits per second down from a satellite to a regular everyday phone on a boat in international waters. So, they're doing some really cool stuff. They have some promising technology. They're stalled out because of rocket problems and no rides to space.

[00:09:52]Now, you think SpaceX is way ahead of the game. They're, you know, their Falcon is super reliable. They keep cranking out more and more Starlink launches every week. But these are all Starlink V2 satellites that SpaceX has been putting into orbit now. They are waiting and pending. The entire future of the Starlink constellation is designed around the Starlink V3 satellites. These are much bigger, more capable, um, more powerful satellites, but they are too big to launch on the Falcon. They are dependent on SpaceX's Starship, their next generation, much bigger, much more economical um, launch system. And Starship has had an up and down uh, development period. They had a really rough beginning of last year, but then they came back, had some great test flights uh culminating in October last year with a almost perfect mission, but they're still not ready to actually bring things into service. They are now took a few months off to redevelop things. They now brought out Starship V3, their third generation of the Starship, and are hoping to gear up to get this out of the test and development phase and ready for actual satellite deployments. and they just had their first Starship V3 test launch and it was a sort of didn't go completely to plan.

[00:11:16]The on the way up the Starship had an engine failure. The super heavy booster had an engine failure but it still got the Starship where it needed to go. So the Starship was able to get complete its mission, get into uh a suborbital trajectory, but the Starship then had an engine out issue and also had some problems. So they had some problems with this. They were able to complete their very important tests by test deploying 20 dummy Starlink simulator satellites to simulate the Starlink V3 that they'll be carrying. So, they tested out their satellite deployment system. That worked out great. They actually tested two active hybrid Starlink V2 V3 um test satellites to test out some of the technology. Those worked. They actually were able to film live video of those satellites drifting away from the Starship as they were deployed. So those parts of the test went really well, but the Starship, the booster crashed into the Gulf rather than coming back for a soft water landing like the test intended. So the FAA has grounded Starship until um the reason for those crashes and the engine outs are solved.

[00:12:22]So SpaceX has got to solve those issues and work through everything before they can relaunch again. And so they're going to have to repeat those tests pushing back the actual commercial deployment of Starlink V3 a little bit further.

[00:12:34]Hopefully those are not big deal issues for them to solve. But right now we're looking at a situation where the new Glenn is grounded for a very long time.

[00:12:43]The ULA Vulcan is grounded who knows for how much longer and SpaceX's Starship is grounded for month, two less. We'll all have to see how these investigations go.

[00:12:55]This means there's really very little in the way of rockets that can get these next generation constellations into orbit. So, the space race is hit some major hiccups lately, but it is uh certainly interesting times ahead and we'll be waiting to see how these companies pivot and deal with um the inevitable delays they are suffering from right now. So, that's an update on the space race. We track this stuff closely over at the mobile internet resource center. Please come over and join us um and geek out on all things space and next generation satellite mobile internet. So see you out there and watch the skies.

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