NASA awards KBR $640M engineering, technical services contract

The flight "telescope segment" of the James Webb Space Telescope sits in the cleanroom at NASA Goddard in 2017.

The flight "telescope segment" of the James Webb Space Telescope sits in the cleanroom at NASA Goddard in 2017. Desiree Stover/NASA

This award continues work KBR has performed for the space agency since 2011.

NASA has awarded a five-year, $640 million contract to KBR that continues the company's support for a wide range of missions through engineering and other technical services.

The Ground Systems and Mission Operations-3 contract covers work at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and other facilities related to missions and launch activities, the space agency said Wednesday.

Some of the high-profile NASA programs covered under this contract include James Webb Space Telescope, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, Solar Dynamics Observatory, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites.

Data out of Deltek and GovTribe indicates that NASA has awarded all three iterations of this contract to KBR and its heritage businesses, including the first competition in 2011 and then the recompete in 2017.

The business formerly known as Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc. won the original competition, then was acquired by KBR five years later ahead of the recompete.

Space has represented a key growth engine for KBR as the company embarked on its current strategy for the government business over the past several years. Both major categories of space are of significant interest to KBR: civilian programs at NASA and those with defense and national security agencies.

The new contract calls on KBR to help NASA carry out operations studies, systems engineering, design, implementation, integration and testing of ground systems and operations products, mission operations and sustaining engineering.

Other work areas will include concept studies, formulation development, implementation, operations, sustaining engineering and decommissioning.