The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has obligated $85,316,136 to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under contract 80NM0018F0569, funding Phase A work on the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Follow On (GRACE-FO) mission. The contract was signed July 20, 2018, and the underlying period of performance runs from October 1, 2018 through September 30, 2028, according to federal award data published on USAspending.gov.

The award was made without competition — the record lists the solicitation procedure as "only one source" — reflecting Caltech's status as the operator of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, under a separate management contract. Task and delivery orders issued to a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) operator like JPL are routinely non-competed for this reason, since JPL is NASA's sole in-house-managed lab for this class of work. The contract carries a cost-plus-fixed-fee pricing structure and is classified as multi-year.

The award is classified under NAICS code 541715 (Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences) and product/service code AR22 (R&D — Space: Science/Applications, Applied Research/Exploratory Development). It is issued against parent award 80NM0018D0004, an indefinite-delivery vehicle with NASA's JPL office. GRACE-FO is a joint NASA/German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) satellite mission that measures changes in Earth's gravity field to track groundwater, ice sheet mass, and sea level change; the current award record does not itemize which specific GRACE-FO deliverables Phase A covers beyond the contract title.

For contractors, the award is a reminder that FFRDC-managed programs like JPL route significant NASA science funding outside the standard competitive process — a distinct track from full-and-open science and engineering procurements that smaller and mid-size GovCon firms typically pursue as JPL subcontractors rather than as primes.

Source: USAspending.gov