FILE PHOTO: General view of the Blue Origin site, on the day the Blue Origin's rocket New Shepard blasts off on billionaire Jeff Bezos's company's fourth suborbital tourism flight with a six-person crew near Van Horn, Texas, U.S., March 31, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Pierre Aguirre/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin has signed a multi-launch deal with satellite communication company AST Spacemobile to deploy the company's direct-to-cellular satellites "over a multi-year period" using Blue's New Glenn rocket, the companies announced Thursday.
AST in a statement said the Blue Origin launches, as well as others using "existing launch vehicles" that it did not identify, satisfies the launch capacity needed to "enable continuous space-based cellular broadband service coverage across some of the most in-demand cellular markets globally."
AST's launch campaign will be in 2025 and 2026 and involve the deployment of roughly 60 next-generation Block 2 BlueBird satellites. Blue Origin said New Glenn will launch "multiple" such satellites but did not say how many missions are involved.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
