The US Space Force announced Tuesday that it has awarded $ 384 million in contracts to United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, giving each company two missions to launch military satellites in 2023.
United Launch Alliance won mission orders for the missions USSF-112 and USSF-87. Both launches use the next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket and take off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The contracts awarded to ULA are worth nearly $ 224.3 million, according to a post on the Department of Defense contract website. The USSF-112 mission is scheduled for launch in the second quarter of 2023, while the USSF-87 mission will launch in the third quarter of 2023, according to the Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center.
The Vulcan Centaur missile will come in zero, two, four, or six strap-on solid rocket booster variants. The Vulcan Centaur is scheduled for its first test flight in late 2021.
The space force has not disclosed the configuration of the missiles for the USSF-112 and USSF-87 missions, nor disclosed any details about which satellites will be carrying the missions.
Tory Bruno, ULA’s CEO, tweeted that both missions aim to deliver their military payloads in “high-energy orbits,” which likely means that the Vulcan Centaur will place the satellites in orbit at higher altitudes.
“I can’t talk about mission specifications, except that these are challenging, high-energy jobs,” he tweeted.
SpaceX won commission orders to launch the USSF-36 and NROL-69 missions with payloads for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, which owns the US government’s intelligence gathering fleet of spy satellites. SpaceX’s contracts are valued at more than $ 159.7 million, the Pentagon said.
The SpaceX missions will be launched on Falcon 9 rockets, with one taking off from Cape Canaveral and the other from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The USSF-36 mission is scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2023, and the NROL-69 mission has a launch date in the third quarter of 2023, according to the Space and Missile Systems Center.
The job assignments awarded to ULA both include costs for “basic launch services and mission integration,” said the Space Force. SpaceX’s USSF-36 task sequence includes launch services and integration, but the NROL-69 task sequence includes basic launch services only. The NRO will separately fund the cost of the mission integration, SMC said.
The four missions announced Tuesday come from the latest set of task assignments awarded to ULA and SpaceX under the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 contracts. The Pentagon announced last August that ULA and SpaceX have won a long-running competition for contracts to launch the military’s most critical and expensive space missions, defeating proposals from Northrop Grumman and Blue Origin.
The Space Force will order Phase 2 missions from ULA and SpaceX until the end of 2024 for launches that can take place until the end of 2027.
ULA, a 50-50 joint venture founded in 2006 by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will receive 60 percent of the National Security Space Launch contracts for missions during that period. SpaceX gets 40 percent.
At the same time as the announcement of the Phase 2 contract last August, Pentagon officials awarded the first three phase 2 launch assignment assignments – two to ULA and one to SpaceX – for missions in 2022. ULA received $ 337 million last year for the first two assignment assignments. , while SpaceX received $ 316 million, including money to upgrade launch facilities and fairings to house all of the military’s satellites.
The companies will use their Vulcan Centaur, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to launch the National Security Space Launch missions.
“The National Security Space Launch Phase 2 Launch Service Procurement contracts provide our customers with affordability, flexibility and extremely high reliability,” said Colonel Robert Bongiovi, president of SMC’s launch company. “This is the second order of the five-year Phase 2 ordering period. We are very happy with the flexibility our Phase 2 providers offer to make the best launch choices and customizations as we go along. “
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