This is one more victory for Elon Musk and SpaceX. And a setback for Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, who created the space company Blue Origin. The two US billionaires, who cordially hate each other, were vying to win future Pentagon satellite launch contracts.
Read also: SpaceX takes off a "grain silo"
The US Air Force has just retained SpaceX as a second partner alongside the United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. This was for a long time in a monopoly situation, before NASA and the Pentagon wanted to create emulation by opening their market to competition. The decision also leaves aside Northrop Grumann, who was in the running.
A reliable partner of NASA
ULA (for 60%) and SpaceX (40%) share a multi-year contract of 30 to 34 missions over the period 2022-2026, within the framework of the National Security Space Program (NSSL). The Pentagon specifies that it plans to spend some $ 1 billion per year in this context. A first tranche of 653 million
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