ABBEVILLE, La. — Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to formally announce Tuesday that Elon Musk's SpaceX has reached a deal to build a multibillion-dollar spaceport on roughly 130,000 acres of coastal marshland near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish, a project state officials say could bring thousands of jobs to a rural stretch of south-central Louisiana.

Landry's office sent invitations to hundreds of government officials and dignitaries last week ahead of Tuesday's event, scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. in Abbeville. His office described the gathering as "a defining moment for Louisiana's future," though it remains unclear whether Musk himself will attend, either in person or remotely. Key lawmakers set to attend the event told the USA Today Network they were unsure whether Musk would appear, and Landry declined to comment specifically on the deal when asked by that outlet Monday.

The proposed spaceport site sits along an 18-mile stretch of coastal south Louisiana roughly 45 miles south of Lafayette, in a sparsely populated area with a permanent population of only about 100 people along Louisiana Highway 82. According to reporting on the project, only a fraction of the more than 130,000-acre parcel would actually be used for launch infrastructure, with the remainder serving as a buffer zone.

The deal is directly connected to the resolution of a long-running coastal damages lawsuit that Vermilion Parish and the state of Louisiana had filed against ExxonMobil. A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana formally dismissed that lawsuit, clearing a path for the land transfer at the center of the SpaceX agreement. Under the settlement, first announced by Landry in June, ExxonMobil is expected to turn over land it has owned in Vermilion Parish since the 1950s, property that........

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