NASA has recently selected Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a leading technology and engineering company based in Reston, Va., to provide safety and mission assurance support at two of its key facilities – the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. This partnership will be facilitated through the Safety and Mission Assurance Engineering Contract III (SMAEC), which is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with the ability to issue various task orders.
The SMAEC contract begins on June 1 with a five-year base period, followed by two one-year options for extension. The total maximum value of the contract is approximately $494 million, allowing SAIC to provide safety, reliability, and quality engineering services for NASA programs and projects in deep space.
Under this partnership, SAIC will support several critical NASA programs and projects that are essential to its exploration efforts in deep space. These include the Orion spacecraft, Gateway lunar space station, extravehicular activity and human surface mobility, Commercial Crew Program, commercial low Earth orbit development, International Space Station, and human research programs.
The Commercial Crew Program is part of NASA’s initiative to partner with private companies to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station and low Earth orbit. The Gateway lunar space station, a key component of NASA’s Artemis program, will serve as a staging point for crewed missions to the Moon and help establish a sustainable human presence there. SAIC’s support will extend beyond these two facilities to other NASA centers, U.S government facilities, contractor or subcontractor locations as specified in task orders.
Overall, this partnership between SAIC and NASA is expected to enhance safety standards at both Johnson Space Center and White Sands Test Facility while also providing critical engineering services for NASA’s deep-space exploration initiatives.
