SpaceX Awarded Two SDA Launches for $150 Million

From the department of not-at-all-surprising news:

Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX), Hawthorne, California, has been awarded a $150,450,000 firm-fixed-price contract for launch services from Vandenberg Air Force Base for the Space Development Agency's Tranche 0 Transport and Tracking Layer space vehicles. This award was made based on the Tranche 0 Launch request for proposal (HQ085021R0001) released Oct. 6, 2020, to which responses were due Nov. 9, 2020. SpaceX will provide standalone launch services via two launches, with the first launch occurring in September 2022, and the entire constellation on orbit no later than March 31, 2023.

I had been expecting this news since the request for proposal went up, so nothing shocking here. Now it’s up to the SDA to sort out the protests surrounding these satellites, which is a bigger and more difficult task.