Space Exploration Technologies (Space-X) has been awarded a US Air Force umbrella contract worth up to $100 million to provide low-cost launches over the next five years using its Falcon I booster.
The responsive small spacelift services individual contract requires Space-X to launch 12 months after each contract is awarded.
The Falcon I is set to make its maiden flight late in the third quarter from Vandenberg AFB, California, where a static test firing was scheduled for 3 May. The first mission will carry the USAF's TacSat 1 spacecraft. The second is to launch a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency satellite from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific in the third quarter.
First flight of the Falcon I has been delayed by a conflict with the final launch of Lockheed Martin's Titan IV heavylift booster carrying a classified payload. This is to lift off from an adjacent pad at Vandenberg on 10 July.
The last Titan flight from the US East Coast was on 29 April, when a Titan IVB was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying what is believed to be the fifth Lockheed Martin-built Lacrosse radar-imaging satellite.
Source: Flight International