Mississippi’s Vertex Aerospace has won a contract with NASA to provide labour support to ensure continuing safe operations of the Sonny Carter Training Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory Operations Contract II has a two-year base period that begins October 1, 2024, followed by five option periods ranging from one to two years with a possible extension of services through 2034.
The total potential value of the contract is USD265.2 million. The contract includes a cost-plus-award-fee portion, which covers the core work, and an option to transition to cost-plus-fixed-fee and back again.
Under the contract, Vertex Aerospace will provide the technical, managerial, and administrative work needed to ensure the reliability of integrated hardware and software systems used at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory to prepare astronauts for human spaceflight missions.
The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory is a facility that is available at all times for critical training and mission support operations and is kept in a ready state to support the dynamic nature of human spaceflight. The laboratory features a 6.2-million-gallon pool, an essential tool for spacewalk training, simulates the weightlessness experienced by astronauts in space.
