SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse rocket has secured a new US military launch contract worth $ 150 million, closing a spectacularly successful year.
The contract, announced by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Space Development Agency (SDA) on Dec. 31, stipulates that SpaceX will launch as many as 28 Transport and Tracking Layer (TTL) satellites on two Falcon 9 rockets in the seven months between September 2022 and March 2023. If all goes to plan, those two launches will orbit an entire “Tranche 0” satellite constellation hoped by the SDA to demonstrate the extraordinarily rare ability of a US military agency to act quickly. and provide field solutions that are both affordable and affordable. effective.
If successful, Tranche 0 will provide the US military with a global network of communications satellite and missile detection satellite constellations capable of providing “warning, tracking and heading data” around the world.
Curiously, SDA’s decision comes at the same time that repeated protests from Raytheon have frozen work on 8 of the 28 satellites that SpaceX is now set to launch – four of which SpaceX itself has won $ 149 million to design and build. Known as the Tranche 0 Tracking Layer, SDA signed a contract with SpaceX and L3Harris ($ 193 million) on October 7, 2020 to build four missile warning satellites each. The award was SpaceX’s first-ever satellite production contract, quietly catapulting the company into the multi-billion dollar market for U.S. civil and military spacecraft.
SDA finally bowed to Raytheon’s protests and announced plans to “re-evaluate” its decision to award Tracking Layer contracts to SpaceX and L3Harris, but the agency says it will not allow new bids. In other words, unless SDA discovers some flaw in the original decision-making process, the odds are extremely low that the protest will change the outcome. In the meantime, however, the protest means that SpaceX and L3Harris are required by law to pause all work on their respective satellite development contracts until the SDA completes its re-evaluation.
The previous month, SDA had awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin ($ 187.5 million) and York Space Systems ($ 94 million) for the supply of ten “Transport Layer” satellites each. The Tranche 0 Transport Layer is designed to use laser interlinks to securely route Tracking Layer missile warning alerts almost anywhere on Earth, while also providing some limited general communication capabilities.
Whether Raytheon’s protests actually land the company one of the Tracking Layer satellite production contracts, SpaceX is now guaranteed to launch them.
