NASA has once again chosen Elon Musk’s SpaceX for another project.
On Tuesday, June 2, the US space agency announced that it had awarded SpaceX a contract valued at about $69 million to launch the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) spacecraft mission into low Earth orbit.
With SpaceX’s Falcon 9 as NASA’s COSI launch vehicle, the joint partnership will launch a space telescope to probe the universe in high-energy gamma-ray light. The launch of the astronomy mission is scheduled for August 2027 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA.
What does SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch of NASA’s space telescope aim to accomplish?
The US government agency previously selected COSI in 2021 for its Small Explorer (SMEX) program, which was valued at $145 million at the time, excluding launch costs. According to Space News, the spacecraft will detect soft gamma rays and their sources in the galaxy and beyond.
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NASA said Tuesday that its Wide Range Gamma-ray Telescope will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, “including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the last stage of stellar life.”
COSI “will investigate the origin of galactic positrons in the Milky Way, reveal the sites of nucleosynthesis in our galaxy, perform gamma-ray polarization studies and find multi-message source counterparts,” the agency added in a statement.
This mission was originally slated to fly in 2025. However, the launch was pushed back to 2027 due to budget constraints. NASA says it expanded Phase B design work to accommodate budget pressures.
Global Space Media also reported that NASA declined to disclose the number of companies bidding for the launch because it considered the information “sensitive to selective sourcing.”
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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 earned the buzz-worthy title of being the busiest rocket operating in the arena. This year he has already appeared 67 times.
The NASA x SpaceX mission is a joint effort between the University of California, Berkeley Space Science Laboratory, UC San Diego, Naval Research Laboratory, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Northrop Grumman.
In addition to the COSI program, NASA previously enlisted Musk’s spacecraft manufacturer to intentionally destroy the International Space Station (ISS) after its expected retirement in 2030. Through the $843 million contract, the so-called SpaceX’s “Deorbit Vehicle” (USDV) will guide a laboratory back into Earth’s atmosphere, thereby decommissioning it.
