Goddard Space Center

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, a civilian sub-agency within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, procures and funds research, development, and operations support for space science and Earth science missions including orbital observatories, planetary missions, and ground systems infrastructure. GSFC executes its work through both federal contracts and grants, with the contract portfolio dominating the agency's transactional volume.

GSFC awarded 19,820 federal contracts cumulatively since 1979, generating combined potential value of $101.96 billion with $64.72 billion obligated to date. Recent contract activity declined sharply: 127 awards in 2023, 113 in 2024, 58 in 2025, 51 so far in 2026, and 2 recorded with award dates in 2027. The most recently recorded award date is May 1, 2027. Among 4,161 distinct prime contractors, competitive concentration by award count is moderately concentrated—the top five primes (Rothe Enterprises, TMC Technologies Of West Virginia Corp, Chenega Global Protection, Accura Engineering And Consulting Services, and Inuteq) hold 30 percent of recent awards. By potential value, the top five are highly concentrated, capturing only 10 percent of combined recent potential value—a divergence driven by Intuitive Machines, which holds just 5 awards but $9.66 billion in combined potential value, followed at distance by BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems Inc. ($286.2 million on 11 awards) and Southwest Research Institute ($103 million on 6 awards). The long tail of smaller-value awards remains substantial. The set-aside mix skews overwhelmingly toward open competition: 85 percent of awards carry no set-aside designation; 13 percent are small-business set-asides; and 1 percent or less are distributed among 8(a) sole source, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, competitive 8(a), and HUBZone awards.

GSFC issued 193 federal grants cumulatively since 2001, obligating $816.8 million in federal dollars. Grant activity has plateaued in recent years at 20 awards in 2024, down from 49 in 2021. The most recent grant award closed on October 15, 2024. Among 80 distinct grant recipients, concentration by award count is highly fragmented—the top five recipients each hold 3 awards and account for only 23 percent of recent awards. By federal dollars, concentration is highly fragmented as well, with University Of Maryland, College Park dominating at $76.1 million on a single award, but the top five recipients (University Of Maryland College Park, University Of Maryland Baltimore County, University Of Texas At Austin, California Institute Of Technology, and Smithsonian Institution) holding only 10 percent of recent federal dollars. The grant assistance mix is predominantly Project Grants (93 percent) with a smaller share of Cooperative Agreements (7 percent).

Current contract opportunities include the Hydrosphere, Biosphere, & Geophysics (HBG) Support Services II IDIQ CPFF contract (Solicitation 80GSFC27R0015, due December 4, 2026), designated as a small-business set-aside following earlier draft issuance as an open IDIQ; a Ground Systems and Mission Operations-4 (GSMO-4) pre-solicitation RFI (due October 26, 2026) seeking vendor approaches for endtoend mission operations across a broad portfolio including Earth Observing System, James Webb Space Telescope, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope; a Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) Frequency Reference System Flight hardware sole-source pre-solicitation to BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems Inc. (due September 19, 2026); and a Radiation Testing engineering and support pre-solicitation (80GSFC916874, due September 25, 2026) contemplating sole-source BPA award to Texas A&M University's Cyclotron Institute. No recent grant opportunities are recorded against GSFC or its descendant offices.