NASA enters into a $400 million IT contract to speed up and cheaper space flights

On December 22, 2021, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that it plans to reduce the time, cost and risk of developing reusable, safe flights and ground-based architectures and frameworks by signing a contract worth $359 million for software products, services and technical support with Mitchell Vantage Systems.

The Oklahoma City engineering firm won a five-year contract with an indefinite supply/unlimited number of products (IDIQ) to support flight and ground-based software, scientific data systems, working environments, and secure coding. The contract is concluded for a five-year period, which begins in April 2022.

NASA enters into a $400 million IT contract to speed up and cheaper space flights

The agency said that such contracts for orders for individual tasks can be extended for up to one year after the expiration of the order.

Mitchell Vantage Systems will be responsible for providing products and services to support flight and ground-based software, scientific data systems, and software technology, software development, and mission environment.

NASA said:

This contract supports work at NASA's Engineering and Technology Directorate, which focuses on developing reusable, safe flight and ground architectures and reducing mission costs, maximizing development times, minimizing customer software/technical risks, and increasing the scientific value of information products.

The work will be carried out mainly at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

As part of a separate development, the US space agency entered into a contract for the provision of systems and software services (SAS2) with the Virginia-based company Millennium Engineering and Integration. The contract has a maximum limit on the number of orders of about $170 million.

NASA said the contract with SAS2 will support its independent verification and validation (IV&V) program in Fairmont, West Virginia. The five-year contract will begin in May 2022.^[1]

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