The Air Force awarded United Launch Alliance (ULA) a $98.5 million firm-fixed-price contract for Atlas V Completion launch services, marking the end of a series of sole-source contracts to the joint launch group as the service transitions to a competitive space launch procurement program.

This contract provides launch service completion for three previously ordered  National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Atlas V missions, including two Air Force and one National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) missions, according to the Oct. 1 award announcement. ULA is a joint launch venture between Boeing [BA] and Lockheed Martin [LMT].

ULA’s Atlas V sits ready for Orbital ATK’s OA-6 CRS mission to ISS. Photo: ULA.

It includes the production and launch operations for three missions scheduled for launch in 2020: Advanced EHF-6, which will launch the latest satellite in the Air Force’s next-generation protected satellite communications constellation; AFSPC-7, which will mark the sixth launch of the service’s robotic reusable spaceplane, the Boeing-made X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle; and the classified NRO-101 mission.

Work will be performed at Centennial, Colorado; Decatur, Alabama; and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, and is expected to be completed by Nov. 30, 2020.  This award is the result of a sole source acquisition.  Fiscal 2019 and 2020 procurement funds are being obligated at the time of award.

This contract – along with a Sept. 27 launch operations (LOPS) contract for five Delta IV Heavy launches – completes the remaining launches that were procured under the Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Block 1 buy contract awarded to ULA in 2013, said Col. Robert Bongiovi, director of the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Launch Enterprise Systems Directorate in a Sept. 30 media call.

“In the last six years, the Block Buy contract served the NSSL program and our customers very well while saving over $4 billion,” Bongiovi said, adding that 44 national security missions were launched under the Phase 1 program. Two Delta IV Heavy missions and three Atlas V missions previously ordered on the Phase 1 Block Buy contract are now scheduled to launch over the next 12 months, he noted. They include NROL-44 and NROL-82 on the Delta IV Heavy and three Atlas 5 missions (NROL-101, AEHF-6 and AFSPC-7).

The Air Force has issued a draft request for proposals for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) launch services procurement program, where industry partners will compete to provide national security space launch services between 2022 and 2026 on new vehicles that are not powered by Russian-made RD-180 rockets.