Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Writer: Becky Stines
news@utsi.edu
The UTSI Aviation Systems Program has been awarded a NASA
Aircraft Catalog Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) to provide flight
and engineering support for the conduct of airborne science
missions. This BPA has the potential to provide significant external
research funding to UTSI, with a maximum ordering value of $10
million over the next two years. Dr. Robert Moore, Executive
Director for UTSI commended Dr. Corda on this program
accomplishment. “I am extremely proud of this major milestone”,
commented Dr. Moore.
NASA awarded seven new Aircraft Catalog BPA’s in February 2011, with
UTSI Aviation Systems winning one of these. These awards will fund
aircraft platforms to accommodate light and heavy-lift
instrumentation payloads, on fixed wing platforms. The
instrumentation payload(s) will be provided by U.S. government and
non-U.S. government customers. Additional services for engineering,
fabrication, and installation may be requested by NASA, depending on
the particular payload and science mission.
To qualify for these awards, an organization must meet stringent
NASA standards in many flight research related areas, including
aircraft maintenance, flight operations, engineering expertise,
experiment integration capabilities, and flight safety. All of the
Aviation Systems team, comprised of faculty, staff, and several
graduate students contributed to the development of the successful
proposal submitted to NASA. The award was also favorably influenced
by the Program’s successful completion of the Marshal Airborne
Polarimetric Imaging Radiometer (MAPIR) airborne science mission for
the NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center, which was considered by NASA
to be one of the best contractor flight research operations that
they have seen.
The catalog of airborne platforms is managed by the NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center’s Wallops Flight Facility, and the airborne
science missions are conducted at various locations within and
occasionally outside the United States. This BPA will run through
February, 7 2013.
The above information release was approved by Cynthia M. O’Carroll,
Office of Public Relations, Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland.
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