Reports: ULA Submits Proposal for 3rd Air Force GPS III Satellite Launch Contract

United Launch Alliance has submitted a bid to compete on a contract to launch the U.S. Air Force’s third GPS III satellite in 2019 and reiterated its concern about price as a deciding factor in contract competition, Florida Today reported Tuesday.

“As recent launch failures have shown, rockets are not commodities,” the Boeing–Lockheed Martin joint venture said in a statement.

“They are high-risk systems and the consequences of failure are costly and far-reaching.”

James Dean writes ULA submitted the bid Monday, which was the deadline of submission for contract proposals for the GPS III-3 mission.

Tory Bruno, president and CEO of ULA, asked the Air Force in early September to delay by 60 days the deadline for proposals on the GPS III satellite launch contract to give the service branch time to investigate the impact of the explosion of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, according to a report by Christian Davenport for The Washington Post.

The military branch should also consider “reliability, schedule certainty and past performance” in the evaluation of proposals for the launch services contract, Bruno said in a letter to Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall, Davenport notes.

The Air Force did not push back the deadline for proposals despite Bruno’s request, the report added.

SpaceX has started an investigation into the cause of the Sept. 1 explosion of Falcon 9 minutes before the rocket’s static fire test and announced plans to resume rocket launches in November.