Every year, the US Space Force holds a special tender to select suppliers for launching critical national security satellites as part of top-secret missions. This year’s results showed that Elon Musk’s company SpaceX received the vast majority of contracts from the Pentagon division.
Of the seven planned missions, five went to SpaceX. The other two went to its traditional competitor, United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin. These launches, intended for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, will not take place for several years. At present, only SpaceX and ULA have rockets certified to launch expensive and secret Pentagon cargo.
Price of success
The financial side of the deal proved to be no less interesting. The Space Force will pay SpaceX $714 million for five launches, averaging $143 million per mission. ULA will receive $428 million for two missions, or $214 million per launch. This is approximately 50% more expensive than SpaceX’s offer. Experts attribute this difference to SpaceX’s revolutionary approach—the reuse of Falcon rocket first stages—whereas ULA’s Vulcan rocket is exclusively single-use.
Cargoes of extreme importance
The nature of the missions has also changed. Four out of five SpaceX launches will be carried out using the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, which indicates the delivery of particularly heavy or bulky payloads. Only one mission will be given to the Falcon 9 rocket.
Most payloads remain classified, but among them are well-known projects such as the WGS-12 communications satellite and the new generation GPS navigation satellite. These contracts confirm that space remains a critical domain for national security, and that private companies play an increasingly decisive role in this regard.
Here is a list of the Pentagon’s next seven missions assigned to SpaceX and ULA:
- USSF-149: secret cargo on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
- USSF-63: secret cargo on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
- USSF-155: secret cargo on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
- USSF-205: WGS-12 communications satellite on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
- NROL-86: secret cargo on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
- USSF-88: GPS IIIF-4 navigation satellite on a ULA Vulcan VC2S rocket.
- NROL-88: secret cargo on a ULA Vulcan VC4S rocket.
Earlier, we reported on how the US launched a top-secret spy mission.
According to arstechnica.com
