The North American aerospace company SpaceX launched into space last Saturday from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, another 34 satellites from its Starlink constellation and the BlueWalker 3 satellite from AST SpaceMobile.
This was the 14th launch and landing of the Falcon 9 first stage, which previously launched Crew Demo-2, ANASIS-II, CRS-21, Transporter-1, Transporter-3 and nine Starlink missions.
It is “one of our most complex missions to date”, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described in a tweet, referring to the deployment in different orbits of the Starlink satellites and the test satellite for the broadband network. of AST SpaceMobile.
Blue Walker 3 is an AST SpaceMobile test satellite, which aims to build “the first and only space-based cellular broadband network that can be accessed from standard smartphones,” according to the company.
Called SpaceMobile, this ultra-powerful network is designed to deliver connectivity at 4G/5G speeds across the globe, on land, at sea, and in flight.