The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday awarded billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX an $83 million contract to launch a GPS satellite, breaking the monopoly Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. have held on military space launches for more than a decade.
The Global Positioning System satellite will be launched in May 2018 from Florida, air force officials said.
The fixed-price award is the military's first competitively sourced launch service contract in more than a decade. It ends the exclusive relationship between the military and United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.