NASA has awarded the NASA Balloon Operations Contract to Orbital Sciences Corporation of Greenbelt, Maryland for engineering and operations services to support the NASA Balloon Program.

This contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee core contract with a cost-plus-fixed-fee indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity portion. The basic core contract value is $64,885,402 million and the basic period of performance will begin on Feb, 1, 2015 and extend thru Sept 30, 2016.

The value of Option I is $75,917,649 million with a two-year period of performance and the value of Option II is $45,490,020 million with a 16-month period of performance. If all Options are used, the value of the contract is $186,293,071 million.

Under this contract, Orbital will operate program facilities including the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) in Palestine, Texas, and the permanent balloon staging facility at Fort Sumner in New Mexico.

In addition to the CSBF locations, work also will be performed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Wallops Flight Facility, at Wallops Island, Virginia, balloon launch sites, and Orbital's facility in Greenbelt.

Orbital also will provide operational balloon flight support including launching, tracking, and recovery of the scientific balloons and payloads, and engineering services for operational support, quality control, and balloon research and development.