SpaceX Wins Potential $97M GPS III Satellite Launch Service Contract

Falcon 9 rocket carrying an EchoStar-23 television broadcast satellite is scheduled to liftoff at 1:35 a.m. Space Exploration technologies Corp. -underbid an alliance of defense industry leaders to win its second launch contract from the USA military in company history.

Therefore the first stage is not outfitted with either landing legs or grid fins to maneuver it back to a touchdown.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) had been doing launches exclusively in the past decade for the U.S. Air Force. The said mission follows the successful launching of the Falcon 9 rocket when it recently delivered the Dragon space capsule, said to contain at least 2 tons of NASA supplies.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX-a.k.a. The company is aiming to land and reuse the first stage of its rockets for other missions, which it hopes will enable it to bring its costs – and its customers’ prices – down significantly.

In nearly two years, this was the first Falcon 9 booster flew without any landing gear. The launch marked the very first commercial satellite mission facilitated at Kennedy Space Center and the second launch for SpaceX on its new pad which is still being refurbished to support future deep space missions and human spaceflight.

The first April launch is likely the Intelsat 35e communications satellite, part of Intelsat’s “Epic” fleet, to provide coverage over North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. Previous year the company’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, said such reuse could bring about a 30 percent reduction in price, which is already low by industry standards ($62 million, according to SpaceX’s online menu).

A recovered SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch may be the last of the dispensable launches SpaceX does for some time. Its last mission was about three weeks ago, when it launched supplies for NASA to the International Space Station.