Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, has dropped the lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force. In a statement, SpaceX says that the latest settlement improves "competitive landscape" for space launches.
In April 2014, SpaceX filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force alleging that the agency wrongly awarded a contract to the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The said contract involved launching military satellites for the Air Force. The lawsuit also alleged that an Air Force official was bribed for awarding the contract to ULA.
"The long-term contract, which guarantees the purchase of 36 rocket cores from ULA to be used in national security launches, was granted to ULA on a sole-source basis without any competition from other launch providers," per a SpaceX statement released in April 2014.
SpaceX also mentioned in the statement that the company is not looking for these contracts to be awarded to them but wants the right to compete.
On Friday, Jan. 23, SpaceX released a statement that the company and Air Force have reached an agreement and SpaceX has dropped the lawsuit against Air Force.
"The Air Force and SpaceX have reached agreement on a path forward for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program that improves the competitive landscape and achieves mission assurance for national security space launches," per the latest SpaceX statement.
The EELV program focuses to keep government space launches very affordable, which means that payloads and military satellites can be transported to the space at a low bill.
SpaceX was unable to compete for the military satellite launch contract as its Falcon 9 rocket was not certified under EELV. The new statement reveals that SpaceX will work in collaboration with Air Force for completing the certification process in an expedient and efficient manner. SpaceX may have to wait until mid-2015 to get fully certified, but it is not clear if the latest settlement will speed up the certification process for the company.
Air Force has also added a number of competitive openings for launch services, which SpaceX may get in the near term. All existing obligations with ULA will be honored.
The statement also suggests that the Air Force would conduct competitions in a steady way with the several certified providers.
The terms of the settlement between Air Force and SpaceX has not been revealed, but reports suggests that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft mediated the settlement talks.
