The Space Force's biggest launch order yet goes to the rocket it already trusts

The US Space Force handed SpaceX its largest publicly announced batch of launches yet under the military’s main launch program, awarding $1.6 billion for 18 Falcon 9 missions [1][21]. The rockets will fly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027, carrying Pentagon satellites built to detect and track airborne targets [1][21]. It is the biggest single order so far under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 program, the Pentagon’s flagship system for buying rides to orbit [1].

The choice is telling. The Space Force could spread this work across the four US firms it has cleared to bid - SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, and others [21]. Instead it put the most sensitive military hardware on the Falcon 9, a rocket that has been flying since 2010 and has launched hundreds of times [21]. When the payload matters most, the buyer reached for the vehicle with the longest track record, not the newest design.

A rocket flying almost every week

Part of what “trusted” means here is simply that the Falcon 9 keeps flying. In the same stretch of days as the contract, SpaceX flew a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Cape Canaveral [5][31], and lofted two more batches of 24 Starlink internet satellites, one from Vandenberg and one from California [14][17]. That cadence - military, intelligence, and commercial payloads in one week - is the point. A rocket earns trust by doing the ordinary job, over and over, without drama.

Ars Technica’s weekly launch roundup made the same observation about the Falcon 9 and Rocket Lab’s smaller Electron: both “have been the workhorses for small and medium lift for the United States over the past decade and may remain so for some time” [8]. A workhorse is a vehicle that does the routine heavy lifting so reliably that planners stop worrying about it.

The newer rivals are still proving themselves

The contrast is with the vehicles meant to challenge the Falcon 9. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket - the company’s flagship new design - has been stuck in a months-long technical investigation into a faulty booster separation system [21]. Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule, whose 2024 test flight NASA formally classified as a serious failure, may finally fly again this year, its maker says [51]. SpaceX’s own next-generation Starship remains in flight testing; its 13th test vehicle was still floating in the ocean five days after its late-July flight [23].

None of that means the new machines are bad. It means they have not yet built the record that makes a buyer relax. A design’s true failure rate is unknown until it has flown enough times to reveal it, and the highest-stakes payloads are the last place a customer wants to find out.

Quieter moves this week

Away from the big contract, several smaller stories advanced. NASA picked the company Advanced Space to fly a follow-on to CAPSTONE, an earlier small spacecraft that tested an unusual looping orbit around the Moon; the new mission will practice the delicate business of two craft meeting and maneuvering near each other in lunar space [24]. Japan’s H3 rocket - that country’s own newer heavy-lift vehicle - was named to launch the next Moon lander from the company ispace [20].

And in the week’s oddest footnote, astronomers tracked a spent Falcon 9 upper stage, left over from an earlier launch, drifting on a path expected to hit the Moon [8][50]. It is a reminder that the hardware which reaches orbit does not simply vanish - the discarded pieces keep moving for years, and occasionally end up somewhere no one planned.