OW35: Starship has Landed

Starship actually drops “satellites” out of its belly

and the room collectively forgets how to breathe

On August 26, 2025, SpaceX did the one thing that moves satcom spreadsheets from daydream to budget reality. Starship reached space and deployed eight Starlink simulators from that cavernous payload bay. No confetti cannon, no TED Talk, just a choreographed open, release, and “we can do this at scale” signal that landed like a drum hit at a stadium show. Put grand ambitions aside and it still reads like a market reset.

Deployment in flight is the headline capacity buyers have been waiting on, because it hints at rapid orbital logistics that feel boring in the best possible way. The official mission page spells it out by date and by sequence, so the “did that really happen” crowd can go grab screenshots and recalibrate their timelines. The words “first successful payload demonstration” might be the priciest four words to appear on a launch page this year. August 26, 2025, now has a spot on your corporate calendar.

The show around it added some sizzle. Engine relight in space, check. Heat-shield drama on the way back, check. A splashy end in the Indian Ocean, also check. The booster did its own separate water ballet.

For satcom buyers, the important part is not the smoke trail, it is that a reusable mega-truck just demonstrated the mechanics of mass destruction, …. errr deployment, sorry. Think of your favorite sci-fi scene where the hangar doors slide open and a small fleet pours out ready to take out the Death Star. That is the vibe. The get-to-orbit piece had been solved for years by Falcon 9, how exciting, no more. The “throw a lot of hardware efficiently, then do it again on a cadence” part is where this becomes a low-cost freight railroad for LEO constellations, and that’s hot.

The immediate implications are spicy. A viable Starship deployment routine compresses time to capacity, which means LEO operators can model upgrades in seasons rather than in multi-year arcs. It puts pressure on ground programs to keep pace, and it gives procurement teams cover. It also pokes GEO and MEO providers in the ribs to sharpen their “we play very nicely in hybrid” stories, because the story customers heard this week is that scale agility is not mythical.

And yes, SpaceX did all that while livestream hosts sounded like they were narrating the trench run, which was either delightful or traumatic depending on your alignment.

Pick your poison.
The physics did not care.

SES teases a brand reveal

… and the peanut gallery starts practicing its spit-takes

The grown-up rationale is fine. A combined GEO and MEO heavyweight that borrows LEO when useful needs a single story. Customers want one contract, one portal, one team that answers at three in the morning. Investors want one organism with a spine, not two legacy beasts sharing a wallet. A fresh wrapper helps sales explain policy engines without accidentally teaching a physics class. All true. All necessary. And yes, a clean brand can be a power move if it is backed by real knobs that real operators can turn without summoning a priest. But

Solve. Empower. Soar.

It’s like a tagline that belongs on a motivational poster in an HR hallway. What does it even mean. Who writes this stuff, a committee trapped in a WeWork with a bowl of verbs. Somewhere a brand agency held a three-hour workshop about “purpose pillars,” circled three words on a whiteboard, and sent an invoice with two commas. “Solve. Empower. Soar.” reads like the tagline that comes free with a stock photo of a person on a cliff. You had a name every defense buyer and teleport manager already knew, and you swapped it for a TEDx fridge magnet. Bravo. Truly revolutionary to replace hard-won recognition with calendar-invite poetry.

If we are doing S E S, at least pick words that mean something in this industry. Here are five that actually track to work you can point at, not vibes you can embroider on tote bags:

Service. Experience. Support. Put the customer in the sentence and back it with teeth.
Stabilize. Engineer. Serve. Reliability first, build well, then pick up the phone at 03:00.
Satellite. Everywhere. Simple. Coverage, ubiquity, zero-drama provisioning.
Secure. Elastic. Smart. Gov-grade trust, bursty capacity on demand, policy that thinks.
Signal. Edge. Sovereign. Get the bits to the edge, respect data borders, keep it controllable.

See how those sound like things a network does, not a yoga retreat.

It’s almost performance art. Solve what, exactly. Empower whom, precisely. Soar where, apart from the PowerPoint. If the goal was to prove that gravity affects brand strategy too, mission accomplished. The satellites look serious. The slogan looks like it came free with the stock photo license.

Anxious to see the final Logo … we are.

AT&T writes a 23 billion dollar love letter

On August 26, AT&T announced it would acquire roughly 50 MHz worth of low and mid-band spectrum from EchoStar for about 23 billion dollars. Even by U.S. telco standards that is an all-caps number. The press release takes the corporate tone you expect. It talks about converged growth, more places, more fiber alignment, all that. Translation for satcom readers is short and loud.

The big blue carrier is stacking more mid-band where it matters, and it is cementing EchoStar as a wholesale partner for Boost’s hybrid MNO future. EchoStar, for its part, filed the 8-K, fed the wire services, and smiled like a person wheeling a cart of vintage wine to the register.

A few weeks ago, the FCC’s scrutiny had EchoStar in a box. Now the company has a pathway, a war chest, and a cleaner story. The deal also ricochets through NTN and D2D boardrooms because it sharpens the question of who owns the handset relationship when the sky is involved. August 26 will live in your deck for months. It should.

The “OMG” angle writes itself. You can read this as a strategic masterstroke by AT&T to block a fourth facilities-based competitor from becoming dangerous. You can read it as EchoStar finally choosing focus after flirting with a dozen possible identities. You can also read it as a very loud signal that the telco core is where the user experience will be brokered, with satellites selling capacity behind the curtain.

Pick any of those readings and you get the same practical outcome. The economics of U.S. connectivity just tipped a little more toward vertically integrated behemoths with multiple last-mile options. That pushes satellite operators harder into two lanes, either be a clean wholesale capacity engine with bulletproof SLAs or be a specialist with government credibility that carriers cannot easily match.

Either way, the long shadow of this transaction will reach into your 2026 strategy slides, and it will be wearing a very smug smile.

Still worth a double shot espresso

T-Mobile’s “SuperMobile” moves satellite from novelty to SKU

… and yes the name dares you to roll your eyes

On August 27, T-Mobile rolled out SuperMobile for business. It bundles network slicing, enterprise security, and a feature they call T-Satellite inside a single plan. The official line reads like a blockbuster trailer. The subtext is better. A top-tier U.S. operator just productized satellite coverage inside an enterprise offer with real customers named in the copy. That is a high-society debut for supplemental coverage from space. It turns “maybe we could” into “we sell this.” The date is stamped, the page is live, and an ad campaign with Kevin Bacon is already in the wild.

It also codifies the power dynamic everyone in D2D suspected. The carrier with the handset billing relationship will describe the experience, set the SLA tone, and point the finger when things go sideways. Constellations will supply capacity and APIs, and they will adhere to telecom change-management rituals like they were born to them.

If you sell satellite and you have never had to pass a carrier’s security questionnaire at Level Boss difficulty, I have bad news. Your autumn looks busy. The good news is that this takes NTN out of stunt territory. SuperMobile tells the Fortune 500 that sky bars belong in their continuity planning. That means budget. That means tickets and runbooks. That means grown-up money.

Telesat shuffled the finance seat and hugged

… which is exactly how you act when the checks are about to move

On August 27, Telesat named Donald Tremblay as CFO, effective October 20. It is the kind of governance note that slips past casual readers and sets off alarms in vendor sales teams. A company with a capital-intensive LEO program at the lock-in stage does not change the person holding the pen without purpose.

The bio hits all the greatest hits you want to see in that chair. Capital markets experience, compliance, risk, M&A. This is a “strap in” appointment. Suppliers and lenders know what that means in Q4. The calendar will soon do what calendars do. The Lightspeed program is a schedule.

One week earlier, Telesat Government Solutions signed a memorandum with ALL.SPACE to integrate their multi-link terminals with Lightspeed. That is not confetti either. User equipment is where the hybrid dream gets real or dies of shame.

ALL.SPACE has spent years pitching simultaneous links, beam juggling, and terminal-brain smarts to anyone who will listen. Putting that together with Lightspeed for the government market is a signal to program officers who worry about handoffs and policy engines more than constellations. It gives Telesat a story about resilience that does not depend on vibes. It gives procurement a device to circle in the spec. That is the stuff that makes Q1 field trials feel less like theater.

Luxembourg’s LUXEOSys got to orbit

Another sovereign imaging asset enters service, which moves the conversation from “what can we see” to “how do we share it across borders, agencies, and time zones without leaking secrets.” That is a communications problem with a geospatial coat of paint. The answer usually blends terrestrial, private cloud, and, when needed, satcom routes that are controlled tightly enough to pass the sniff test. The fact that this is Luxembourg is a case study in how small states build outsized space competence.

This stresses the same operational knobs we keep turning. If you sell secure transport, or if you integrate policy engines that arbitrate between multiple orbits, you just got another talking point that happens to be a real mission with real dates and a real ministry attached.

AST SpaceMobile swears FM-1 is shipping “this month”

and the collective industry reaches for popcorn

AST SpaceMobile says its big-boy FM-1 satellite is finally rolling out of Midland before August taps out. That’s a promise with share-price consequences and carrier-contract gravity. If FM-1 actually ships, the dominoes include schedule credibility for the next batch, the launch manifest chessboard, and how loudly partners can market D2D that isn’t just a sizzle reel. The vibe is half triumph, half “you sure about that, champ.”

The skepticism isn’t random; trade press has been side-eyeing the timeline for weeks. Still, if AST threads this needle and gets FM-1 into the queue, the D2D race tightens and handset-friendly coverage claims start sounding less like wishcasting. Net-net: high drama, high stakes, and an unusually large satellite that needs to make its entrance like a headliner showing up halfway through the set.

Astranis gets tapped as prime for the U.S. Space Force’s PTS-G

and yes, that thud you heard was jaws hitting floors.

On August 28, Astranis said it will serve as prime contractor for the Space Force’s Protected Tactical Satcom Global program, which is not a cute tech demo but a front-row seat at the secure MILSATCOM table.

Translation for the peanut gallery: a microGEO specialist just got trusted with hardened, anti-jam grade service, and that elevates the entire small-sat play from scrappy to strategic in one press release.

OMG is appropriate, and so is a quick rewrite of everyone’s “who can actually deliver protected capacity” slide.

The takeaway at chaotic speed

If you want the short emotional arc, here it is. Ooh at Starship opening its mouth and feeding the sky. Ah at a telco buying enough airwaves to host a minor weather system. OMG at a rebrand tease that could either be sleek or meme fuel, then remember it is a signal of operational intent.

Laugh at the names, sure, but do not miss the point. The packets do not care about your orbit pride or your color palette. They care about path selection, latency budgets, and whether someone answers the phone at three in the morning.

On that front, this was a very good week.