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. Robert Moore, Executive Director for UTSI commended Corda on this program accomplishment. “I am extremely proud of this major milestone”, commented 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.