An Air Force official said seven to 10 missions to be awarded competitively would include a number of GPS 3 satellite launches, which appear well suited to the capabilities of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket (left). Meanwhile, a National Reconnaissance Office mission dubbed NROL-79 will launch atop ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket.

Tuesday’s briefing begins with SpaceX and ULA racing towards personal bests in lobbying expenditures and Putin replacing the Russian Federal Space Agency with a state-run corporation with the same name and responsibilities.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...