SpaceX Was Awarded $300 Million By Defense Department

On Tuesday, the Department of Defense announced a lot of reconnaissance contracts worth a total of $738 million. Among the many contracts signed, there was the appearance of SpaceX and the US Air Force contracts worth up to $297 million.

The contract includes the launch of AFSPC-44 (which belongs to Air Force Space Command), and NROL-87, NROL-85 of the National Reconnaissance Office Launch. Of course, these tasks are often very secretive so we cannot know exactly what they will carry into space. However, it is likely that they will involve sending various satellites into orbit in order to gather information.

SpaceX has also been assigned many missions launched by the government

According to information provided by the Defense Department, SpaceX will probably be accountable for most of the tasks including production, deploy tasks of launching, integrating missions, creating special activities for the different missions.

February 2021 is the expected completion time of the AFSPC-44 mission. Meanwhile, the two missions NROL-87 and NROL-85 are planned to be finished in December of that year. It is known that there was another company competing to get these contracts, but the final victory belonged to SpaceX.

Meanwhile, United Launch Services in Colorado has received its remaining $441M to complete its projects including SBIRS GEO-6, SBIRS GEO-5, and SILENTBARKER.

Defense Department gave SpaceX $300 million in order to be in charge of three important launch missions

SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell stated that the company was very proud to be selected by the Air Force. They now have the opportunity to support the country’s defense through these important launch missions. Additionally,  they also have a chance to continue offering good value products such as Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 vehicles.

Space national security has given SpaceX nine launch missions up to this point and the company has completed up to 66 missions in all projects successfully.