NASA (NASA) contracts

About contracting with the NASA

NASA is a relatively small federal agency by headcount but a substantial buyer thanks to the concentration of contracted activity in its mission programmes. The contracting model is heavily centre-based: each of the major field centres runs its own procurement office with delegated authority for the mission portfolio assigned to that centre. Johnson Space Center handles crewed-spaceflight operations and the Mission Control complex; Kennedy Space Center handles launch operations, processing, and the spaceport; Marshall Space Flight Center handles propulsion and the Space Launch System; Goddard handles a large share of Earth- and space-science satellites; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (operated by Caltech as an FFRDC) handles deep-space robotic missions. From a vendor perspective, NASA contracting is unusually concentrated — major programmes like Artemis, Gateway, the Commercial Crew programme, and the science-mission flagships are dominated by a handful of large primes (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Ball Aerospace, Maxar). For small and mid-sized vendors the most productive paths are subcontracting under those primes, the NASA SBIR/STTR programme (one of the larger SBIR programmes in the federal government), and direct contracts for ground-systems, IT, mission-operations support, scientific data analysis, engineering support services, and centre operations. The Information Technology Procurement Office (ITPO) runs the Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) GWAC, which is one of the most popular federal IT procurement vehicles across all of government — not just NASA. Construction and facilities work at NASA centres is contracted locally by each centre. Vendors targeting NASA should align with 541715 (R&D), 541330 (engineering), 336414 (guided missile and space vehicle manufacturing for hardware integrators), and 541512 (IT). The NASA Office of Small Business Programs runs Mentor-Protégé and outreach programmes. See our federal contract search and SAM.gov alternative pages for tools to track NASA opportunities by centre and programme.

Read the full NASA contracting guide →