Leidos keeps Space Station cargo packing work with new $159M contract

Leidos has won a potential six-and-a-half year, $159 million NASA contract to continue its cargo packing and unpacking work for the International Space Station program, the agency said Friday.

NASA's Cargo Mission Contract 3 program is a recompete of the predecessor contract awarded in 2010 to Lockheed Martin's former IS&GS business. Leidos inherited the contract through its mid-2016 merger with IS&GS.

CMC 3's phase-in period begins Jan. 2, 2018 and that is followed by a two-year base period, one two-year option, one 18-month option and another one-year option. The incumbent contract is slated to expire on March 31, 2018, according to Deltek.

The agency started this contract in an effort to identify efficient ways to pack manifested cargo and verify adequacy of the cargo carriers. NASA also wants to figure out how it can pack pressurized cargo into sub-carriers, ship cargo to integrators and return cargo to providers upon its return to Earth.

Additional goals for CMC 3 include means to build, modify or re-certify hardware as needed to support cargo transportation, flight crew equipment, ancillary system hardware, simple payload facility hardware and simple payload support items requirements.

Leidos' work will include sustaining engineering for flight crew equipment, pressurized cargo packing and transport hardware, non-integrated ancillary system hardware, simple payload facilities and payload support items for deliveries to and from the space station.