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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been awarded a new US military launch contract worth $ 150 million, ending a spectacularly successful year.
Announced by the Department of Defense (DoD) Space Development Agency (SDA) on December 31, the contract stipulates that SpaceX will launch up to 28 Transport and Tracker (TTL) satellites on two Falcon 9 rockets over the course of seven months between September 2022. and March 2023. If things go as planned, these two launches will put into orbit a whole constellation of “Tranche 0” satellites hoped by the SDA to demonstrate the extremely rare ability of a US military agency to act quickly and offer solutions that are both affordable and effective.
If successful, Tranche 0 will provide the US military with a constellation of globally networked missile communication and detection satellites capable of providing “alert, track and target” data anywhere on Earth.
Oddly enough, SDA’s move comes at the same time that Raytheon’s repeated protests froze work on 8 of the ~ 28 satellites SpaceX now has to launch – four of which SpaceX itself won $ 149 million to design and build. . Known as the Tranche 0 Tracking Layer, SDA entered into 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 satellite production contract, rather quietly catapulting the company into the multibillion-dollar market for US civilian and military spacecraft.
SDA eventually 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 said it would not allow the bid. new offers. In other words, unless SDA discovers some sort of error in its initial decision-making process, the chances are extremely low that the protest will change the outcome. In the meantime, however, the protest means SpaceX and L3Harris are legally bound to halt all work on their respective satellite development contracts until SDA completes its reassessment.
The previous month, SDA had awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin ($ 187.5 million) and York Space Systems ($ 94 million) for the delivery of ten “Transport Layer” satellites each. The Slice 0 transport layer is designed to use laser interconnects to safely route tracking layer missile warning alerts almost anywhere on Earth, while providing limited general communication capabilities.
In the end, if Raytheon’s protests actually earn the company one of the Tracking Layer satellite production contracts, SpaceX is now guaranteed to launch them.
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