U.S. military leaders are looking to solidify U.S. security not only on Earth, but also in space. And toward that end, they are enlisting the help of a growing number of private-sector startups to design and build new, less-costly means of lifting satellites and other payloads into orbit.

Elon Musk—the same Musk that brought us Tesla—is one of their rising stars. Musk’s company SpaceX first pitched its experimental Falcon rockets as a vastly cheaper alternative to conventional rocket boosters, and the Air Force listened. SpaceX and the Air Force made history last year when a SpaceX rocket launched a first-of-its-kind Air Force space plane called the X-37B into low Earth orbit for a 270-day cruise.

4 Big Wins for SpaceFlight Innovation and Department of Defense GPS Satellite Launches

SpaceX rockets will go into more Air Force service this spring, when the company embarks on a running series of GPS satellite launches. These include:

  1. Launch of an Air Force GPS 3 satellite in May 2018. The Air Force awarded SpaceX an $83 million contract for this back in April 2016. This contract was a milestone. It wasn’t only SpaceX’s first-ever Air Force contract; it was also the first space-launch contract in more than a decade that the Air Force ever gave to a company that wasn’t United Launch Alliance (see below).
  2. Launching another Air Force GPS III satellite in February 2019. SpaceX won the $96.5 million contract for this in March of last year.
  3. An ambitious launch of a Falcon Heavy rocket carrying 25 defense and civilian research satellites. The mission is part of the Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) and will lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in June 2018.
  4. Three more GPS 3 satellite launches in 2019-2020. SpaceX received a $291 million contract for the them just this month under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program, an Air Force initiative that is “the primary provider of launch vehicles and services for U.S. military and intelligence satellites,” according to the Government Accountability Office.

United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, also won big this month. EELV issued it a $351 million contract for two Air Force Space Command satellite missions in 2020.

ULA: An Expected Defense Space Winner

ULA’s award was expected, though. The company was EELV’s only rocket provider from 2006 until 2013. Technically it was its only provider even earlier: Its two parent companies had the exclusive lock on EELV contracts ever since EELV started issuing space-launch contracts in 1998. Musk sued for the right to bid, and in December 2013 DoD agreed and issued a revised contract that opened some upcoming launches up to competitive bids.

ULA still carries out a substantial number of military launches and will continue to do so. But SpaceX is making inroads and going head-to-head with ULA in what was a ULA-only domain.

And more up-and-comers are entering the fray. Orbital Sciences Corporation, also a developer of space-launch vehicles, signed a cooperative research-and-development agreement with the Air Force’s Space and Missile Center in January. And DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit signed contracts last year with several Silicon Valley startups, including Orbital Insight, which is developing tools to analyze space-satellite data in real time; and Capella Space, which will deploy a constellation of small radar satellites capable of super-high-resolution imaging.

The demand is certainly there. The Air Force is projected to invest $44.3 billion in space systems over the next five years. It’s not hard to see why: GPS data and wireless communications are increasingly critical to every aspect of military operations. Every branch of the military seeks the capabilities of gathering actionable data, translating it instantly, and conveying it from unit to unit. These are capabilities that only satellites can provide.

Satellites are, of course, still very costly. But the growing number of companies offering to partner with the military on them means competition, and with that may come the innovation processes that drive costs down. The military, its flourishing array of private-sector collaborators, and the United States that they are all committed to protecting, will be stronger and more secure together for it.

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Rick Docksai is a Department of Defense writer-editor who covers defense, public policy, and science and technology news. He earned a Master's Degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland in 2007.