McGregor, Texas; and Los Angeles Air Force Base, California; and is expected to be complete by April 30, 2018. Fiscal 2017 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $40,766,512 are being obligated at the time of award. The Launch Systems Enterprise Directorate, Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles AFB, California, is the contracting activity (FA8811-16-9-0001).

Each Raptor engine will have three times the thrust of SpaceX's Merlin 1D engine that's currently used in the Falcon 9.

SpaceX has conducted several dozen successful hot fires of the Raptor engine. SpaceX has completed over 1,200 seconds of firing across 42 main Raptor engine tests.