NASA chooses joint venture for $719M engineering recompete

NASA has awarded the five-year, $719 million recompete of a contract for broad engineering support services to a joint venture of KBR and Intuitive Machines.

This third iteration of the Omnibus Multidiscipline Engineering Services contract has a start date of July 1 and supports the Goddard Space Flight Center that is one of NASA's 10 major field centers, the space agency said Tuesday.

The Space & Technology Solutions joint venture is poised to take over work areas such as instrument systems engineering, software development, analysis, design, testing, verification, fabrication, systems safety and configuration management.

OMES III's scope of responsibility includes the primary support vehicle for the Joint Polar Satellite System, a constellation of environmental satellites used to help develop weather prediction models.

NASA developed the JPSS satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is responsible for operating the constellation.

Science Applications International Corp. is the incumbent contractor for the OMES II contract that is slated to sunset on June 30. NASA has obligated 97% of that contract's ceiling since the initial award in 2017, according to GovTribe data.

Regarding the partners in STS -- KBR is a global engineering services provider that has prioritized space as one of its key government market growth avenues.

Intuitive Machines was founded in 2013 to focus on developing payloads, landers and other platforms for accessing the Moon and supporting communications from the lunar surface. The firm went public in February through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, a so-called "blank check company"

One of Intuitive Machine's co-founders is Kam Ghaffarian, who partnered with Harold Stinger to start Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies in 1994. KBR acquired SGT in 2018.