SpaceX on April 30 will launch its first spy satellite, this one for the United States government.

The spy satellite NROL-76 will be the payload aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.2 (Falcon 9 Full Thrust), whick will blast-off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This spy satellite is under classified mission for the U.S. Department of Defense but will be operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which has the largest budget among all members of the United States Intelligence Community.

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NRO designs, builds and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. government, and provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the NSA; imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

SpaceX founder Elon Musk confirmed the launch of the spy satellite via Twitter saying Falcon 9 is ready after completing static fire testing.

All previous NROL missions were launched by the United Launch Alliance (ULA), and the success of SpaceX in taking a launch away from ULA signifies an inclination by the NRO towards cheaper spaceflights for its very expensive spy satellites.

SpaceX has been involved with military projects for almost a year but this is the first time it will launch an NRO satellite. This April 30 launch will be SpaceX's 33rd launch using its Falcon 9 rocket since 2010.

It will also be the fifth space mission this year.

United Launch Alliance (ULA), the former monopoly provider of launch services for the U.S. Air Force, has been forced to drastically slash the launch cost of its Atlas V rocket by about one-third following another contact loss to low-cost launch provider SpaceX.

Last month, ULA lost a $96.5 million Air Force contract to SpaceX to launch an Air Force global positioning system (GPS) satellite.

"It was a price-focused competition," said ULA CEO Tory Bruno.

Bruno said he later learned from the Air Force that SpaceX bid a far lower price than his company.

ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security. ULA was formed in December 2006 by combining the teams at these companies which provide spacecraft launch services to the United States government.