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NASA agrees to take a second look at its $1.8B COSMOS contract following protest
Incumbent KBR successfully challenged the award to Ascend Aerospace & Technology, prompting the agency to review its evaluation and best-value determination.
Just weeks before NASA’s new prime contractor was set to begin work on the $1.8 billion COSMOS contract, the agency has backtracked on that decision in the face of a challenge from the disappointed incumbent.
COSMOS is the acronym for the Contract for Organizing Spaceflight Mission Operations and Systems. It supports command and control systems for space vehicles involved in programs such as Orion, Space Launch System, International Space Station, Commercial Crew Program and Artemis.
KBR is the incumbent on the predecessor contract known as the Mission Systems Operations Contract. Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies won the contract in 2017, and KBR subsequently inherited it through its acquisition of SGT the following year.
But NASA went in another direction in the recompete by choosing Ascend Aerospace & Technology, a joint venture formed in 2013 by Amentum and Aerodyne to pursue large NASA contracts. Ascend won the recompete in September and was set to begin work on the contract on Dec. 1.
KBR filed its protest on Sept. 9 challenging the evaluation of its proposal and the agency’s best-value determination. On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office dismissed the protest after NASA said it would take corrective action to address KBR’s concerns. NASA intends to review its evaluations and make a new best-value determination.
KBR has received nearly $1 billion in task order volume since work began in early 2018, according to GovTribe data.