Space Force Announces Another Round of Launch Contracts

On Friday, April 4, the US Space Force announced a new $13.7 billion round of launch contracts to put their “most critical” payloads into orbit into the 2030s.  

Unsurprisingly, the contract breakdown is like this:

• SpaceX will get 28 missions worth approximately $5.9 billion
• ULA will get 19 missions worth approximately $5.4 billion
• Blue Origin will get seven missions worth approximately $2.3 billion

As usual, a little more detail adds some clarity. 

Rounded to the nearest million, the contract with SpaceX averages out to $212 million per launch. For ULA, it's $282 million, and Blue Origin's price is $341 million per launch. But take these numbers with caution. The contracts include a lot of bells and whistles, pricing them higher than what a commercial customer might pay. 

Ranking by percentage of missions awarded, SpaceX is the clear winner at 52% of the contract and they're also the lowest cost launch provider.  When you consider that ULA's Vulcan rocket just got certified to fly those missions and Space Force has said a couple of times that ULA's pace is too slow for them, their getting 35% of the launches seems a bit optimistic.  Blue Origin at seven launches might be even more so.

After racking up a series of successful launches with its Falcon 9 rocket more than a decade ago, SpaceX sued the Air Force for the right to compete with ULA for the military's most lucrative launch contracts. The Air Force relented in 2015 and allowed SpaceX to bid. Since then, SpaceX has won more than 40 percent of missions the Pentagon has ordered through the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, creating a relatively stable duopoly for the military's launch needs.

The Space Force took over the responsibility for launch procurement from the Air Force after its creation in 2019. The next year, the Space Force signed another set of contracts with ULA and SpaceX for missions the military would order from 2020 through 2024. ULA's new Vulcan rocket initially won 60 percent of these missions—known as NSSL Phase 2—but the Space Force reallocated a handful of launches to SpaceX after ULA encountered delays with Vulcan.

Regular readers might remember a few posts about Space Force launch contracts talking about phases and lanes and that whole thing is still too arcane for me to be comfortable with.  About all I feel comfortable saying is that "Lane 1" is higher risk and tends to go to newer launch vehicles for lower orbits and easier paths to get there. 

Friday's announcement covers Lane 2 for traditional military satellites that operate thousands of miles above the Earth. This bucket includes things like GPS navigation satellites, NRO surveillance and eavesdropping platforms, and strategic communications satellites built to survive a nuclear war. The Space Force has a low tolerance for failure with these missions. Therefore, the military requires rockets to be certified before they can launch big-ticket satellites, each of which often costs hundreds of millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars.

The Space Force required all Lane 2 bidders to show their rockets could reach nine "reference orbits" with payloads of a specified mass. Some of the orbits are difficult to reach, requiring technology that only SpaceX and ULA have demonstrated in the United States. Blue Origin plans to do so on a future flight.

The military expects to order 54 launches in Lane 2 from this year through 2029, with announcements each October of exactly which missions will go to each launch provider.  This year, it will be just SpaceX and ULA. The Space Force said Blue Origin won't be eligible for firm orders until next year. 

This image shows what the Space Force's fleet of missile warning and missile tracking satellites might look like in 2030, with a mix of platforms in geosynchronous orbit, medium-Earth orbit, and low-Earth orbit. The higher orbits will require launches by "Lane 2" providers. Credit: Space Systems Command

"A robust and resilient space launch architecture is the foundation of both our economic prosperity and our national security," said US Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. "National Security Space Launch isn't just a program; it's a strategic necessity that delivers the critical space capabilities our warfighters depend on to fight and win."