Blue Origin will launch a "space base station" rocket this weekend, and competition in the direct-to-mobile phone satellite business is accelerating.

Blue Origin plans to launch a new "New Glenn" heavy-lift rocket this Sunday. This mission is regarded as a key turning point in the pattern of reusable orbital launch vehicles. If the launch and recovery go smoothly, it will declare that SpaceX's "exclusive monopoly" in the field of reusable orbital rockets has been broken, and further ignite the three-way competition between Amazon Leo, AST SpaceMobile and SpaceX Starlink in the direct-connect satellite business for mobile phones.

This mission is carried out by the "New Glenn" sub-stage booster that completed its first flight and recovery during the second mission in November last year. Whether it can return safely again is crucial for Blue Origin to build a cost-competitive reusable launch system. In the past few years, SpaceX has gained an overwhelming advantage in commercial launches and satellite Internet deployment with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket.

For Amazon, a mature and reliable in-house reusable rocket has become an urgent need to promote the Leo satellite network. Due to the lack of such a launch platform, Amazon has so far only put 241 Leo satellites into orbit, significantly behind the original schedule; in contrast, in the past 12 months, SpaceX relied on the "Falcon 9" to launch more than 1,500 satellites to its Starlink constellation, and the gap between the two in constellation size and deployment speed continues to widen.

This Sunday's New Glenn mission has another level of significance - it will launch AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 satellite into low Earth orbit. Unlike Amazon and SpaceX, which tend to deploy thousands of small satellites to provide “overwhelming” coverage, AST is choosing to build its network with fewer but more powerful satellites. Carrying an approximately 2,400-square-foot phased array antenna, BlueBird 7 will be one of the largest commercial communications antenna arrays ever deployed in low-Earth orbit. It is essentially a giant "cell phone tower" sent into space and is the second in the company's new generation of "Block 2" satellites.

BlueBird 7 is designed to target ordinary smartphone users, providing 4G and 5G broadband connections directly to existing mobile phones without the need to replace terminals. The theoretical downlink rate can exceed 120 megabits per second. AST plans to deploy 45 to 60 satellites by the end of 2026 and officially light up the service at some point this year. At that time, it will directly compete with Starlink's direct mobile phone service with T-Mobile in the United States. It will also compete with the Globalstar network acquired by Amazon and currently provides "no signal area" emergency communication capabilities for iPhone and Apple Watch.

This is the third orbital mission for "New Glenn". The launch window reserved by Blue Origin is between 6:45 and 8:45 am local time on Sunday, April 19. For Blue Origin, Amazon and the entire low-orbit direct-connect mobile phone industry, this launch window is not only related to the success or failure of a rocket, but may also determine when and how the "mobile phone no service" indication will gradually disappear from users' vision in the next few years.