---
type: source
title: "AST SpaceMobile confirms Falcon 9 for BlueBirds 8-16 after New Glenn failure — 3-6 month grounding, Blue Origin loses satellite customer"
author: "SatNews, Gizmodo, NextBigFuture (multiple sources April 22-29, 2026)"
url: https://satnews.com/2026/04/26/bad-news-but-good-news-followed/
date: 2026-04-26
domain: space-development
secondary_domains: []
format: news
status: processed
processed_by: astra
processed_date: 2026-04-29
priority: medium
tags: [AST-SpaceMobile, New-Glenn, Blue-Origin, Falcon-9, SpaceX, customer-pivot, launch-market, Belief-7, BE-3U]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

**Context:** Blue Origin's New Glenn (NG-3, April 19, 2026) placed AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 satellite in the wrong orbit. One BE-3U upper stage engine failed to produce sufficient thrust on the GS2 burn. Satellite was deorbited (insured). FAA grounded New Glenn.

**AST SpaceMobile's confirmed response:**
- Confirmed Falcon 9 for BlueBirds 8-10, 11-13, and 14-16 (next 9 satellites)
- Still targeting 45 satellites in orbit by end of 2026 (requires alternate launch path)
- Original plan had "six to eight satellites over time with Blue Origin's New Glenn"
- That plan is now effectively cancelled for the foreseeable future

**Blue Origin's "good news":**
- The "good news" in the SatNews headline was not technical — it was that AST SpaceMobile received FCC commercial authorization (April 22-23), allowing them to proceed with commercial service using existing and future satellites
- FCC granted: all Special Temporary Authorities (STAs), frequencies through AT&T/Verizon partnerships, Global Mobile Satellite Service spectrum, FirstNet approval — total 664 MHz
- AST can proceed toward commercial service regardless of which rocket delivers future satellites

**New Glenn grounding timeline:**
- Blue Origin CEO acknowledged failure publicly: "We clearly didn't deliver the mission our customer wanted"
- Root cause: still under FAA investigation (as of late April 2026)
- No return-to-flight timeline from Blue Origin
- Analyst estimates: 3-6 months grounding (same range as NASA's VIPER concern)
- First stage booster successfully recovered and reused — Blue Origin's first booster reuse milestone — masking the upper stage failure

**VIPER implications:**
- New Glenn is contracted for VIPER rover delivery to lunar south pole (late 2027)
- BE-3U failure on NG-3 is exactly the engine that would power Blue Moon MK1 lander
- 3-6 month grounding → late 2026 or early 2027 return to flight at best → Blue Moon development timeline very tight
- VIPER's no-alternative-provider situation (Blue Origin was only CLPS bidder) remains unchanged

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is a direct, real-time demonstration of Belief 7 (single-player dependency). AST SpaceMobile — a satellite company that specifically signed New Glenn launches to diversify from SpaceX — immediately pivoted back to Falcon 9 after one New Glenn mission failure. The "good news" framing of the FCC authorization (not the Blue Origin recovery) reveals how the industry is processing the failure: the FCC news lets AST proceed to commercial service; the New Glenn grounding is just the launch logistics to solve.

**Note:** This is a FOLLOW-UP to the existing archive "2026-04-19-ast-spacemobile-bluebird7-lost-new-glenn-ng3.md" which covered the initial failure. This archive adds: (1) the 3-6 month grounding timeline, (2) the confirmed Falcon 9 pivot for BlueBirds 8-16, and (3) the FCC authorization context.

**What surprised me:** Blue Origin's CEO described the booster recovery as a positive — "pleased with the nominal booster recovery" — while acknowledging the satellite loss. This framing mismatch (booster recovery as success, satellite loss as "not the mission our customer wanted") mirrors the Starship pattern of celebrating booster catches while upper stage failures kill payloads. The PR instinct to lead with booster recovery success is structural across both organizations, not just one.

**KB connections:**
- Directly updates: 2026-04-19 AST SpaceMobile archive
- Belief 7 (single-player dependency): STRONGEST REAL-TIME CONFIRMATION yet — paying customer immediately abandons New Glenn for Falcon 9
- Pattern "headline success / operational failure": confirmed second data point (see also existing archive)
- VIPER risk chain: BE-3U failure is the same engine Blue Moon MK1 needs — the technical risk is not isolated to the NG-3 mission

**Extraction hints:**
- This source updates rather than replaces the 2026-04-19 archive — extractor should synthesize both
- Key claim upgrade: "AST SpaceMobile's immediate pivot from New Glenn to Falcon 9 for BlueBirds 8-16 (9 satellites) demonstrates that launch market concentration around SpaceX is driven not just by cost but by reliability requirements — commercial satellite operators cannot tolerate mission failure risk from early-stage vehicles"

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)

PRIMARY CONNECTION: Belief 7 — "Single-player dependency" — this is the most direct real-time evidence
WHY ARCHIVED: The confirmed Falcon 9 pivot for BlueBirds 8-16 is the resolution to the "what does AST do?" question raised in the April 19 archive. Together, the two archives document a complete causal chain: BE-3U failure → satellite lost → customer confirms Falcon 9 for next 9 sats → New Glenn commercial satellite manifest effectively empties → SpaceX absorbs the customer.
EXTRACTION HINT: Synthesize with the April 19 archive. The combined story is: Blue Origin lost a customer permanently (not just for one mission) within 7 days of the failure, and the customer went to SpaceX. This is what launch market concentration looks like in real time.
