NASA completed negotiation of a new cost-plus award fee
\ncontract to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
\nfor the operation of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
\n(JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The contract will run five years
\nand have a value of approximately $8 billion.<\/p>\n
\nThe contract extends the JPL agreement beyond the current
\nexpiration date of Sept. 30, 2003. The contract includes a
\nnew award-term provision that, based on performance reviews,
\nmay extend the contract period of performance for up to an
\nadditional five years. <\/p>\n
\nConsistent with the agency’s “One NASA” initiative, the new
\ncontract will more closely align JPL’s policies and procedures
\nwith those of other NASA centers.<\/p>\n
\n“The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a national treasure with
\nan amazing record of successes unmatched in the world. This
\nnew contract gives NASA much improved capabilities and
\nmanagement tools and provides powerful incentives for JPL,”
\nsaid Dr. Ed Weiler, Associate Administrator for Space Science
\nat NASA Headquarters, Washington. “I think this is good
\nnews for NASA, JPL, Caltech, and the American people who
\nbenefit from the unbelievable work done at JPL.”<\/p>\n
\nJPL, NASA’s only federally funded research and development
\ncenter, conducts research expanding human understanding of
\nthe Earth, the Sun, solar system, stars, planetary systems,
\ngalaxies and the formation and evolution of the Universe. JPL
\nalso manages NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, which is
\noperating two spacecraft orbiting the red planet and planning
\na series of ambitious missions over the next decade,
\nincluding twin rovers scheduled for launch next year. JPL’s
\nother responsibilities include support to NASA’s
\napplications, space science, Earth science and other high-
\nvalue science programs.<\/p>\n
\nJPL uses instrument observations from space vehicles as the
\nprimary tools for planetary exploration, investigations and
\nscience programs. These missions are supported by ground-
\nbased research and laboratory experiments. Earth sciences
\ninclude research into interactions of our planet’s oceans,
\natmosphere, continents and the effects of solar energy in
\norder to gain an integrated understanding of the total Earth
\nsystem. <\/p>\n
\nThe new contract provides JPL and Caltech with greater
\nclarity in their relationship with NASA and other government
\nagencies. It focuses JPL on its core mission with incentives
\nfor performance and returns full management to JPL of the
\nDeep Space Network, which communicates with interplanetary
\nspacecraft. The management change will assure greater
\nreliability for the network and more management clarity. In
\naddition, JPL now has the ability to review and comment
\ndirectly on NASA policies that affect their performance thus
\nimproving JPL’s ability to accomplish its missions and
\nproviding NASA with advice on the impacts of new policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA completed negotiation of a new cost-plus award fee contract to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for the operation of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-NASA"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/612598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}