March 15, 2018 – The U.S. Air Force awarded rocket launch competitors SpaceX and United Launch Alliance each hundreds of millions of dollars in new satellite contracts, the Department of Defense announced. SpaceX won a $291 million fixed-price contract to launch a military GPS III satellite by March 2020 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, with an option included to launch two more. At $96.8 million per launch, the cost of these latest awards are in line with the two previous GPS III launches SpaceX won in April 2016 and March 2017, for $87.2 million and $96.5 million each. ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won a $355 million fixed-price contract to launch two Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) satellites. The company will launch one satellite aboard an Atlas V rocket in March 2020 and the other in June 2020.