US Space Force awards SpaceX $730 million to launch at least 9 national-security missions

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https://www.space.com/space-force-space ... tober-2024

By Mike Wall
'In this era of Great Power Competition, it is imperative to not leave capability on the ground.'

SpaceX just added another batch of launches to its already-busy manifest.

The U.S. Space Force announced on Friday (Oct. 18) that it has awarded SpaceX $733.6 million, in the form of two "National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 Launch Service Task Orders."

Together, the two task orders cover seven launches for the Space Development Agency (SDA) and one "mission set" for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), according to Space Force officials.

"In this era of Great Power Competition, it is imperative to not leave capability on the ground," Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, said in an emailed statement on Friday.

"The Phase 3 Lane 1 construct allows us to execute launch services more quickly for the more risk-tolerant payloads, putting more capabilities on orbit faster in order to support national security," Panzenhagen added.

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The newly announced SDA task order will help build out Tranche 2 of the Transport Layer, a constellation that will eventually consist of 300 to 500 or more satellites in low Earth orbit.The Transport Layer "will provide assured, resilient, low-latency military data and connectivity worldwide to the full range of warfighter platforms," SDA officials wrote in a description of the planned constellation.

SpaceX has already launched multiple missions to help assemble the Transport Layer and its SDA cousin, the Tracking Layer, which is designed to detect and monitor potential missile threats.

The Space Force statement does not provide details about the seven planned SDA launches.

It does say, however, that the "mission set" for the NRO, which operates the United States' fleet of spy satellites, will launch from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 and the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026. So the task order apparently covers at least two liftoffs. (The fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.)

Both of the new task orders were awarded under an "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" contract that the Space Force signed with SpaceX — as well as Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance — in June of this year.