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SpaceX to retry U.S. satellite national security launch
Thomson Reuters
By Eric M. Johnson
(Reuters) - Elon Musk's SpaceX was poised on Wednesday to launch a long-delayed navigation satellite for the U.S. military, trying for a second day to complete its first designated national security mission for the United States.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a roughly $500 million global positioning system (GPS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin Corp, is due to take off from Florida's Cape Canaveral shortly after 9 a.m. local time (1400 GMT).
On Tuesday, SpaceX halted the planned launch minutes before liftoff due to a technical issue, though it said afterward the rocket and payload "remain healthy."
A successful launch would be a significant victory for Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur who spent years trying to break into the lucrative market for military space launches long dominated by Lockheed and Boeing Co.
It marks SpaceX's first so-called National Security Space mission, as defined by the U.S. military, SpaceX said.
SpaceX sued the U.S. Air Force in 2014 in protest over the military's award of a multibillion-dollar, non-compete contract for 36 rocket launches to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed. It later dropped the lawsuit after the Air Force agreed to open up competition.
In 2016, SpaceX won an $83 million Air Force contract to launch the GPS III satellite, which will have a lifespan of 15 years.
Wednesday's launch is set to be the first of 32 satellites in production by Lockheed under contracts worth a combined $12.6 billion for the Air Force GPS III program, Lockheed spokesman Chip Eschenfelder said.
"Once fully operational, this latest generation of GPS satellites will bring new capabilities to users, including three times greater accuracy and up to eight times the anti-jamming capabilities," said Air Force spokesman William Russell.
The launch was originally scheduled for 2014 but has been hobbled by production delays, the Air Force said.
The next GPS III satellite is due to launch in mid-2019, Eschenfelder said, while subsequent satellites undergo testing in the company's Colorado processing facility.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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