Raytheon reaches for the stars with $250M NASA contract

Raytheon Co. will help NASA reach for the stars, having won a five-year contract worth as much as $250 million to maintain and manage large volumes of sensing data and imagery from space instruments.

The NASA Goddard award, known as the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) evolution and development contract, will give climate researchers access to valuable data about the earth’s atmospheres, oceans, lands and their interactions, according to a company statement today.

The evolution and development program, an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity cost plus award fee contract, has an initial value of $75 million.

NASA developed EOSDIS to manage data collected by a suite of earth observation satellites. The data is used by a growing international community of earth scientists, educators, federal, state, local and tribal agencies and the public.

The data has many uses, including climate change research, disaster planning and response, natural resource assessment, and understanding the earth as an integrated system, the Raytheon statement explained.

Raytheon developed the core system of EOSDIS, which became operational in 1999. It provides data ingest, archive and distribution services at data centers that manage earth-observing data.

In 2003, Raytheon won the core system maintenance and development contract and has continued its partnership with NASA to maintain and evolve key elements of EOSDIS.