By now you've heard the news: On Dec. 22, 2023, small rocket company Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB) won its biggest contract since its foundation -- and it wasn't for launching rockets at all.

For a grand total of $515 million, the U.S. Space Force hired Rocket Lab to design, build, and operate a total of 18 satellites for its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture program, the PWSA. Comprising two separate but related systems, PWSA is designed to encircle the globe in a network of small satellites able to track the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles and then transport data on those missile launches down to command centers in the U.S.

Rocket Lab's contract concerns the second of these two systems, and even more specifically, the second "tranche" of transport-layer satellites, dubbed Transport Layer Tranche 2 Beta (TLT2B).

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Source Fool.com