Remember when your biggest worry about satellites was whether they’d mess with your GPS on road trips? Well, AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) just turned that whole game upside down – and Uncle Sam is writing some very big checks.
Here’s the deal: ASTS builds satellites that let your regular smartphone get internet anywhere on Earth. No special apps, no weird antennas sticking out of your phone – just pure “how is this even possible” magic. Think of it as Wi-Fi for the entire planet, courtesy of some very smart satellites floating around up there.
The company already had some serious street cred, partnering with the big telecom players like AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone. In December, they successfully beamed broadband down using AT&T’s spectrum with their BlueBird 6 satellite. Pretty cool, right?
But here’s where it gets spicy: The Missile Defense Agency just handed ASTS a golden ticket to compete for a piece of a $151 billion defense contract over the next 10 years. That’s not a typo – we’re talking about enough money to buy Twitter twice (back when it was worth something).
This isn’t your grandfather’s defense contract either. The SHIELD program is all about rapid innovation – think AI, machine learning, and stopping hypersonic missiles that move faster than your excuses for being late to work. Instead of the usual “here’s a 20-year contract to build one really expensive thing” approach, SHIELD lets smaller, nimble companies like ASTS compete for specific tasks.
The real kicker? This contract feeds into Trump’s “Golden Dome” initiative – basically building a missile defense shield that would make Iron Dome look like a screen door. With $25 billion already secured for 2025, this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky Pentagon wishlist.
For ASTS, this opens up a whole new revenue stream beyond just helping you stream Netflix from Mount Everest. Military communications, command systems, resilient networks in “contested environments” (military speak for “places where things are exploding”) – all potential goldmines for a company that specializes in seamless, low-latency connectivity.
Now, before you start calculating your yacht payments, let’s pump the brakes. The stock just crossed $100 for the first time and is up over 5% in premarket trading. That’s a far cry from the “wait for a dip to the high $20s” advice from last June (oops). With over 2,400 companies competing for these contracts, ASTS still needs to actually win some bids.
The bottom line? ASTS has the tech, the partnerships, and now the defense opportunity. But at these prices, you’re paying for a lot of future success that hasn’t happened yet. If you’re interested, consider dollar-cost averaging – buy a little now, and add more when the inevitable pullbacks happen. Because in the satellite business, what goes up sometimes comes down (before going back up again).
Just remember: investing in space companies requires a bit of faith in the final frontier. But with the government backing up the Brinks truck, ASTS might just be worth the ride.