Pratt Gains $975 Million NASA Space Shuttle Engine Contract Change

Defense Daily, August 3, 2007

NASA gave Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne a $975 million extension of a contract for maintaining main engines on orbiter vehicles in the space shuttle fleet, bringing the total contract to more than $2 billion.

A unit of United Technologies [UTX], Pratt will perform the work through its office in Canoga Park, Calif.

The existing contract, which began on April 1 last year, will cover maintenance on the engines until the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

The contract includes maintaining and refurbishing existing shuttle main engines at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

The $975 million contract extension brings the total value of the cost- plus-award/incentive fee contract to slightly more than $2.05 billion.

Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne supports the Shuttle Propulsion Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; the Space Shuttle Program Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston; and the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Each space shuttle is powered by three of the sophisticated engines, the world's only reusable rocket engines. During launch, each of the 7,750-pound engines burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, fed from the shuttle's external tank.

Each engine generates about 400,000 pounds of thrust, which works with the shuttle's twin solid rocket boosters to power the spacecraft to orbit.

That stupendous power is needed because the shuttle is used to transport enormously heavy structural components into orbit, which then are cobbled together to form the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS is a bit more than half finished.

[Copyright 2006 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]

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