Air Force Space Command has approved a five-year license for SpaceX—Space Exploration Technologies Corp.—to operate from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla. SpaceX will have to “pay for all improvements, construction, and maintenance” associated with SpaceX operations at SLC-40 and does not have exclusive use of the site, per an AFSPC statement. SpaceX, created by entrepreneur Elon Musk as a lower cost space launch operation, already has an agreement to operate from the West Coast launch facility at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.