A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded during a test, a potential blow to AST SpaceMobile and its launch schedule.

The New Glenn explosion yesterday (28 May) at Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida will likely lead to lengthy investigations by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NASA, which will sideline future launches.

In late 2024, AST SpaceMobile signed a multi-launch agreement with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. It previously relied on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets to launch its birds into orbit before attempting to branch out to the larger New Glenn models.

AST SpaceMobile has predicted an orbital launch cadence of roughly every one to two months this year through deals with multiple launch providers as it continues to target having approximately 45 birds in orbit by the end of 2026.

New Glenn’s seven meter-wide payload fairing is one of the few in the industry capable of accommodating the 2,400 square-foot phased arrays of AST SpaceMobile’s Block 2 BlueBird satellites, with the potential to carry up to eight per flight.

Fallout
“The New Glenn failure is a tough blow to AST which, due to the size of its satellites, has limited options for launch and New Glenn was by far the best option,” Chris Quilty, founder and CEO of research company Quilty Space told Mobile World Live (MWL), adding the company would now struggle to achieve its launch target for the year.

Tim Farrar, president at consulting company TMF Associates, told MWL the explosion has a “huge impact since this was the primary launch vehicle and it will take a year or more to rebuild the [launch] pad”.

“I think this pushes [AST’s] continuous commercial service back to 2028,” he added.

A representative for AST SpaceMobile stated the company’s near-term launches are unaffected.

“None of the missions planned for the next few months are scheduled with Blue Origin. Our satellites are designed to be launcher-agnostic, and we have agreements in place with multiple launch providers, giving us flexibility across our launch programme.”

BlueBirds 8, 9, and 10 are already at Cape Canaveral undergoing final processing ahead of a planned launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket next month.

A launch of AST SpaceMobile’s next-generation BlueBird 7 satellite from a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket last month fell short of the required orbit, resulting in its loss.

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Broadcom and Samsung Electronics launched what they claim is the first integrated 5G and Wi-Fi 8 fixed wireless access (FWA) platform, a milestone for the home broadband industry.

The platform uses Broadcom’s BCM6776 Wi-Fi 8 SoC and Samsung’s B1320 5G modem in a reference design for mass-market equipment which is compatible with 3GPP Release-17 and the emerging Wi-Fi 8 IEEE 802.11bn standard. 

It is also compatible with new radio and narrowband NTN bands, giving operators a degree of connectivity resilience which the companies noted was previously out of reach for consumer-grade hardware.

Samsung’s B1320 is a 5nm chipset capable of delivering 5G data rates of 3.4Gb/s in the downlink and 1.2Gb/s up.

Broadcom’s BCM6776 is a tri-band, single-chip product covering 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz simultaneously, with a quad-core Arm network processor and integrated multi-gigabit physical layer.

The design cuts active power consumption by 50% compared with Broadcom’s previous generation.

Broadcom asserted the combination of the 5G modem and Wi-Fi 8 radio into a tightly integrated reference platform can lower OEMs’ bill-of-materials and simplify board design.

It stated Humax Networks and WNC are already producing next-generation gateways using the platform and global operator trials are underway.

Joonsuk Kim, EVP and head of CP development at Samsung Electronics, framed the platform around accessibility, describing it as a tool provide high-quality connectivity “across a wide range of environments”.

Vijay Nagarajan, VP of Broadcom’s marketing, wireless and broadband communications division, pointed to the coordinated performance between 5G and Wi-Fi 8 as a differentiator for operators trying to guarantee consistent coverage in “every corner of the home”.

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American Airlines detailed a plan to install Starlink satellite internet service across more than 500 narrowbody aircraft starting in early 2027.

The deal will cover much of its Airbus domestic and short-haul international aeroplanes including A321neo and A321XLR aircraft entering the fleet.

Starlink’s Aero Terminal delivers up to 1Gb/s per antenna, enabling streaming, gaming and real-time collaboration tools for passengers.

American Airlines chief customer officer Heather Garboden said the partnership is as much about reliability and low latency as raw speed, promising passengers an at-home level of Wi-Fi connectivity.

Jason Fritch, VP of Starlink enterprise sales at SpaceX, said the service would deliver a fully connected experience for passengers and crew, “making every flight smoother and more enjoyable”.

The partnership arrives as Starlink rival Amazon LEO is building its own airline momentum. JetBlue became the first carrier to commit to the service in September 2025, with a rollout planned to start in 2027.

Earlier this year, Delta Air Lines followed with a multi-year agreement to equip 500 aircraft with Amazon Leo starting in 2028

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A report by Telus Digital exposed significant security vulnerabilities across the generative AI landscape, which included finding every major model could be coaxed into unsafe behaviour under the right conditions.

In the company’s second GenAI Safety Model Benchmark, Telus Digital’s testing found some models engaged with harmful requests more than 90% of the time and stated most enterprises are dangerously underprepared to defend against them.

The testing drew on more than 620,000 adversarial tests across 34 AI models from 10 global providers: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, Zhipu AI, 01.AI and Mistral.

It is the most extensive AI security study Telus Digital has conducted to date, nearly doubling the scope of the first edition published in November 2025.

Attack vulnerability rates across tested models ranged from 1.3% to 93%, where a lower percentage means a safer model. 

Anthropic’s Claude models claimed five of the 10 lowest vulnerability scores, including the benchmark’s overall lowest rate, but Telus Digital noted even single-digit failure rates are unacceptable in high-stakes enterprise contexts involving money, health and reputation.

The research identified model size, reasoning capability and the creator’s overall safety approach as the strongest predictors of resilience.

Reasoning models, designed to deliberate before responding, proved significantly harder to exploit, with a 19.9% vulnerability rate compared to 55.1% for standard models which skip the reasoning step.

Smaller models are consistently the most susceptible to attacks, regardless of whether they are open-source or proprietary. The study found open source models are not inherently less safe than closed ones, with GLM 4.7 from China’s Zhipu AI outperforming many proprietary alternatives.

The benchmark also highlighted where risks cluster most sharply: privacy exploitation, fraud and cybersecurity threats remain the hardest categories for even leading models to handle.

Telus Digital also flagged a pattern called “refuse-but-engage,” where a model declines a harmful request but still provides related information which could cause harm or reputational damage.

Global AI spending is projected to reach $2.52 trillion in 2026, yet spending on AI trust, risk, and security management is projected to be just $3.4 billion, which is roughly $1 in security for every $735 spent on AI capabilities.

Meanwhile, 86% of organisations report having already experienced an AI-related security incident.

Telus Digital urges enterprises to move beyond one-time or periodic safety checks toward continuous, automated adversarial testing embedded directly into development workflows, layered with human oversight and clean data practices.

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