Elon Musk’s SpaceX launches military rocket after four attempts

A SpaceX rocket carrying a military navigation satellite blasted removed from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Sunday, marking practically transportation company’s first national security space mission for that US.

The Falcon 9 rocket carrying a roughly $500m GPS satellite built by Lockheed Martin lifted faraway from Cape Canaveral at 8.51am local time. Four scheduled launches within the past week, including one on Saturday, were canceled because of weather and intricacies.

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The launch is really a significant victory for billionaire Elon Musk’s privately held rocket company, which has spent years seeking to burgled the lucrative marketplace for military space launches dominated by Lockheed and Boeing.

SpaceX sued the usa air force in 2014 over the award of an multibillion-dollar, non-compete obtain 36 rocket launches to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed. It dropped the lawsuit in 2015 following air force agreed to open competition.

The buy, SpaceX won an $83m air force contract to produce the GPS III satellite, that can have got a lifespan of Many years.

The satellite will be the first to produce out from 32 in production by Lockheed under contracts worth a combined $12.6bn to your Air Force GPS III program, based on Lockheed spokesman Chip Eschenfelder.

The launch was scheduled for 2014 but have been hobbled by production delays, air force said.

The next GPS III satellite as a result of launch in mid-2019, Eschenfelder said, while subsequent satellites undergo testing during the company’s Colorado processing facility.