New York, June 17, 2026, 04:18 EDT
- AST SpaceMobile was quoted at $82.25 in early premarket trading, down roughly 6% from Tuesday’s close ahead of Nasdaq’s official open.
- SpaceX said it deployed BlueBird 8, 9 and 10 after launching at 2:39 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral.
- AST lost BlueBird 7 in April, after it went into a lower-than-intended orbit, the company said.
AST SpaceMobile shares fell in early U.S. premarket trade Wednesday. This was after SpaceX said it had deployed three more BlueBird satellites for the company’s direct-to-cell network. The service is supposed to connect regular mobile phones to satellites, with no extra hardware.
AST shares were recently quoted at $82.25 in premarket trade, off roughly 6% from where they finished Tuesday. Premarket action happens ahead of Nasdaq’s 9:30 a.m. open. At that price, AST’s market cap stood near $23.9 billion.
AST SpaceMobile’s new launch is in focus now, coming right after a failed attempt that hit the company with a big loss. In a May filing, AST said the BlueBird 7 satellite, which went up on Blue Origin’s New Glenn in April, ended up in an orbit too low to function and had to be de-orbited. The company valued the satellite at $155 million to $160 million.
Falcon 9 launched at 2:39 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX confirmed all three satellites were deployed, Spaceflight Now said. The Falcon 9 booster landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, according to the report.
AST’s BlueBird 8, 9 and 10 satellites are Block 2, designed for low Earth orbit to reduce signal delay. The company says these satellites each have about 2,400-square-foot communications arrays and should offer nearly double the peak download speeds of the earlier Block 1 BlueBirds, which recently reached 98.9 Mbps on standard smartphones.
Scott Wisniewski, president of AST SpaceMobile, called the launch an “important milestone” in a statement on June 9. He said each BlueBird satellite increases capacity for mobile connectivity to regular phones. The company said it has deals with about 60 mobile operators, among them AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone. Business Wire
Competition is getting tougher. Reuters called AST’s proposed network ambitious like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo. SpaceX is AST’s launch provider too, which makes for some overlap in a business where launch slots and spectrum count.
AST last month told investors it was still aiming to have around 45 BlueBird satellites in orbit during 2026. The company kept its full-year revenue outlook at $150 million to $200 million, citing help from mobile network partners and U.S. government contracts. As of March 31, AST said it had about $3.5 billion in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash.
But putting satellites up isn’t the same as rolling out service. Next hurdles are satellite commissioning, regulatory sign-off, getting launches off on time, partner launches, and keeping cash burn in check. AST points to risks from launch windows, weather, provider readiness, and other issues in its own filings and calls. Losing BlueBird 7 showed insurance can offset losses but doesn’t solve for lost time.
With regular trading in New York hours off, the premarket price move may fade after the open. U.S. exchanges stay open on Wednesday, but Nasdaq has Juneteenth, Friday, June 19, as a full market holiday, which cuts the week short for investors reacting to the launch and what comes next.
