12/25/2025
New Delhi, Dec. 25: India launched the BlueBird Block-2 communication satellite of the United States' AST SpaceMobile on Wednesday at 8:57 AM IST from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. This was the largest commercial communications satellite to be on board ISRO's heavyweight rocket Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3) which is also popularly dubbed as India's ‘Baahubali’ rocket.
The mission was the sixth operational flight of LMV-3, having played a key part in landmark missions like Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3, India's lunar missions. LMV-3 has also several OneWeb satellites (India-1 and India-2), and communication satellites GSAT-19/29. It's most recent operational flight (LVM3-M5) launching the heavy CMS-03 communication satellite was on November 2025.-Agencies