NASA has awarded a federal contract of US $ 153 million to SpaceX, which will launch a next-generation weather satellite.
NASA announced that the chosen to carry a new burden to be space rocket Falcon Heavy, owned by SpaceX. The powerful rocket from Elon Musk’s company is to have the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U (GOES-U) into a geostationary orbit several kilometers in space.
This satellite will have the task of collecting atmospheric images and measurements of the climate, oceans, and environmental systems; it will also map the rays in real-time and improve the monitoring of solar activity and space weather.
The federal contract is for $ 152.5 million, and SpaceX was selected after the United Launch Alliance resigned the mission’s candidacy.
SpaceX sweeps everything
It is not the first time SpaceX has won space contracts, surpassing other aerospace companies, such as ULA, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Recently, SpaceX won the contract to develop the lunar lander via Starship to take a man into deep space.
SpaceX will launch the GOES-U satellite in April from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, representing yet another victory for the company, which Jeff Bezos has criticized for “irregularities” in contracting space missions.