Verified facts grounded in source documentation.
DARPA stated that the first launch of the DARPA Launch Challenge is planned for February 2020 with the second launch planned for one month later.
DARPA is offering a $2,000,000 prize for completing the first launch of the DARPA Launch Challenge and a $10,000,000 prize for completing the second launch.
Airbus won a contract from DARPA in January for the Blackjack program to examine how commercial smallsat constellations could be used for military applications.
Each company that places a payload into orbit during the first launch of the DARPA Launch Challenge will receive $2,000,000 and must perform a second launch from a different site on short notice.
Rocket Lab successfully launched the Radio Frequency Risk Reduction Deployment Demonstration (R3D2) satellite for DARPA on 2019-03-28.
DARPA plans to launch a small experimental Blackjack constellation of commercial satellites in low Earth orbit equipped with military payloads sometime in the next two to three years.