SpaceX Just Landed A Major Pentagon Deal – Here's What We Know

While Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has largely backed away from publicly visible, government-associated work since his departure from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year, his work in other major sectors is ongoing, as is his partnership with the United States government on matters like AI and space travel. On that particular front, SpaceX has successfully secured an extremely lucrative deal from the United States Space Force.

As reported by The Hill, the U.S. Space Force announced that contracts for multiple new spaceflight missions have been awarded to SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance (ULA). SpaceX in particular won the contracts for five of the seven planned missions, with a total price tag of $714 million. All of these contracts are part of the National Security Space Launch program (NSSL) for critical missions related to military security and communication. Launches for these missions are slated to begin in fiscal year 2027 with no fixed delivery schedule, though they are estimated to be completed by 2032.

SpaceX will be responsible for missions USSF-206/WGS-12, USSF-155, NROL-86, USSF-149, and USSF-63. The particular contents of most of these spacefaring payloads are classified, though according to Breaking Defense, USSF-206 will contain a new encrypted military communication satellite. The two missions being handled by the ULA, NROL-88 and USSF-88/GPS IIIF-4, have similar priorities, with the latter being new Global Positioning System satellites. The ULA's contracts are worth a comparatively lower, though still quite lucrative, $428 million.

While Elon Musk has become a controversial figure in American politics this past year, SpaceX remains one of the most frequent partners of the Space Force, thanks in large part to its reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. One of the company's only other major competitors in the sphere is Blue Origin, the spaceflight company headed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Unfortunately for Blue Origin, its newest rocket, the New Glenn, has not yet received a certification from the NSSL, and as such, was not eligible to receive any of the new contracts. A test flight for this certification is scheduled to launch later in October.