Photo credit: NASA Johnson

Aerospace company SpaceX has won a $149 million contract to build missile-tracking satellites for the U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA), marking the aerospace company’s first-ever such government contract to build satellites. The contract stipulates that SpaceX will build four overhead persistent infrared imaging (OPIR) satellites that’ll be able to “provide missile tracking data for hypersonic glide vehicles and the next generation of advanced missile threats”. SpaceX won its contract along with L3Harris Technologies, another defense contracting giant that’ll itself also build four missile-tracking satellites for the U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA). L3Harris is, however, charging a substantially higher $193 million for its portion of the contract.

SpaceX will construct the missile tracking satellites at its assembly plant in Redmond, Washington, where it currently assembles its Starlink internet satellites. The company will build four satellites fitted with a wide-angle infrared missile-tracking sensor that’ll be supplied by a subcontractor.

SpaceX’s new contract falls under the U.S. Space Development Agency’s first phase to obtain satellites to detect and track high-tech missiles which are able to travel long distances and are usually challenging to track and intercept. The U.S. Space Development Agency had before now awarded contracts to other manufacturers for transport layer satellites that’ll work together with the tracking layer satellites to be built by SpaceX and L3Harris Technologies. The contract is ultimately planned to involve a ‘couple hundred’ satellites in the transport layer and a few dozen in the tracking layer.

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