Under Contract

• SpaceX, a company run by Elon Musk, won a $96.5 million Air Force contract to launch a GPS satellite into space. The only other government contractor with the required certification to launch the satellite — United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin — did not bid on the contract. It’s the second launch contract SpaceX has received from the Pentagon and is a big shakeup for the defense industry. ULA had been providing these services for more than a decade without competition.

• The National Institutes of Health awarded Westat Inc. a contract worth up to $16.8 million to “collect, process and analyze data” in an agency effort to examine links between various types of infections and cancer. The end goal is to be able to better screen for and prevent these kinds of cancers. “Since cancers that are caused by infections typically occur with greater frequency in the developing world,” contract documents say, the work requires contractors to assist researchers internationally.

{mosads}• Three different U.S. embassies around the world are getting new furniture, thanks to a new set of State Department contract awards. Each of the stores chosen by the State Department were done so without a competitive bid process for reasons including wanting to match the furniture and decor already at each compound. For example, luxury brand Summer Classics won a $117,000 contract to provide outdoor furniture for the chief of mission residence in Praia, Cape Verde. Another contract will pay Supplies Express $56,000 for outdoor teak furniture and trash cans for a compound in Karachi, Pakistan. The deputy chief of mission residence in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, got $28,500 worth of updated furniture from Heritage Home.

 • The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service awarded a seven-month contract, worth up to $936,900, for the “daily air cargo transport of biological material from Guatemala to the United States and the Dominican Republic.” Air Freight & Services in Guatemala won the contract. Contract documents are not more specific about what is being transported.

Contract information compiled from General Services Administration data and government press releases. Send announcements about government contracts to mwilson@digital-staging.thehill.com.