Just yesterday (6th of October), the SpaceX was given a contract valued over $149 million from the Space Development Agency (SDA) giving the company the objective of creating a new satellite for the US military that has the capacity to track and provide early warning alerts for hypersonic missile launches. The L3Harris Technologies company was almost given an exuberant amount of 193$ million USD to also build the aforementioned satellites.

These satellites are aimed to be the first defense of the SDA Tracking Layer Tranche 0, which is constructed to allow missile tracking for the Defense Department from space with the help of infrared sensors. Together, these two aeronautic companies will design and construct eight satellites to give to the DOD for the Tracking Layer Program, part of a planned constellation system. This marks the first time SpaceX has been given the authority to build satellites for the DOD.

The company is rapidly expanding to grow its own satellite flight with its Starlink constellation — a proposed constellation of approximately 12,000 satellites aiming to transmit broadband internet to users on Earth.