The largest commercial antenna ever deployed in low Earth orbit belongs to a company most people have never heard of. AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 6 is either the future of cellular connectivity or the most ambitious overreach in telecom history - and it just finished unfolding.
Designed for a two-year mission to catch gamma-ray bursts in the act, Swift is now 21 years old, slowly falling out of the sky, and the subject of an unprecedented private rescue mission. Nobody planned for it to be this hard to let go.
A 90-kilogram spacecraft with iodine thrusters and two Australian-built cameras is quietly building the case that tracking space debris is a business worth billions - and that a four-year-old startup from Irvine can own it.
When China finally launched its first batch of Guowang satellites in December 2024, they revealed almost nothing about the spacecraft. Sixteen months and 163 satellites later, the secrecy hasn't lifted - but the orbital data tells its own story.
In a year when EchoStar agreed to sell $40 billion in spectrum, tried to give DISH away for a dollar, and nearly went bankrupt, it still managed to launch what may be the most capable direct broadcast satellite ever built. Here's why.
