NASA Opens Bidding for $425M Earth Science Contract
The five-year contract supports data and modeling research and is limited to small business applicants.
Updated on Oct. 21, 2026 in Space
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NASA has officially opened the bidding process for its new $425 million Hydrosphere, Biosphere & Geophysics Support Services II contract. This five-year agreement is reserved exclusively for small businesses to provide technical support for Earth science research.
Why it matters
The contract is critical to maintaining NASA's Earth science pipeline, as it funds the data product development, instrument design, and numerical modeling essential for space-based climate and geophysical monitoring.
The new five-year contract carries a $425 million ceiling, trailing the $484 million obligated to Science Systems and Applications Inc. under the current agreement since 2020. Task orders will be issued using a mix of cost-plus-fixed-fee and firm-fixed-price structures.
The players
NASA
The United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research, and Earth science missions.
Science Systems and Applications Inc.
A contractor specializing in Earth and space science support services and the current incumbent for the Goddard contract.
Goddard Space Flight Center
A major NASA research laboratory that focuses on Earth science, astrophysics, and heliophysics.
The details
NASA requires external support to sustain operations at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which manages large-scale datasets and instrumentation. The scope of work covers the full lifecycle of data products, from initial development to complex numerical modeling used to simulate planetary processes. Because the solicitation is reserved for small businesses, contractors must meet specific size standards to compete for the task orders that fuel this research.
Timeline
October 21, 2026: NASA released the final solicitation for the contract.
December 4, 2026: Proposal bids are due by 2 p.m. ET.
March 31, 2027: The incumbent contract is slated to sunset.
The Tech Race
This solicitation sustains the technical support ecosystem surrounding the Goddard Space Flight Center's Earth science mission. It follows the precedent of long-term managed service contracts that provide the computational and engineering throughput for federal satellite data analysis.
Small businesses operating in the aerospace and Earth science software sector are the primary entities affected by this solicitation. These firms have until December to finalize proposals for the work, which directly supports the backend data processing pipelines used for climate science.
The takeaway
The transition to the new contract marks a significant budgetary shift for the support services that power NASA's geophysical modeling. Industry watchers should monitor the contract award announcement in early 2027 to see which small businesses will lead the next five years of research support.
What happens next
Prospective contractors must submit their final bids to NASA by 2 p.m. ET on December 4, 2026.
Further reading
For broader trends in federal space initiatives, visit Space.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Washington Technology.
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