NASA has announced that it has awarded 25 new contracts, with a cumulative value of $475 million over 10 years, to empower the agency’s workforce through active engagement with the public.
Creative Approaches to Space Exploration
The agency said Thursday the 25 new NASA Open Innovation Service, or NOIS, contracts, managed by the Johnson Space Center in Houston, are part of efforts to foster global collaboration and crowdsourcing to address complex challenges. The contracts seek creative approaches and unique perspectives to tackle complex space exploration challenges.
The selected companies will perform rapid experimentation using different technologies, methodologies and perspectives to accelerate the development of innovations needed for space missions. The 25 awardees are as follows:
- Blue Clarity
- Capital Consulting Corp.
- Challenge Works
- CrowdPlat
- Design Interactive
- DrivenData
- Ensemble Government Services
- Hyperion Technologies
- Floor23 Digital
- Freelancer International
- HeroX
- HYVE Innovate
- Innoget
- Institute of Competition Sciences
- Loyal Source Government Services
- Luminary Labs
- National Institute of Aerospace Associates
- Randstad Federal
- Rios Partners
- SecondMuse
- TechConnect
- Toffler Associates
- Tongal
- Topcoder
- yet2.com
The NOIS contract, the third of its kind, is handled by NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. CoECI supports open innovation efforts, assisting in defining challenges and requirements while developing and assessing possible fixes. Its end-to-end service enables NASA and other federal agencies to perform rapid experiments with the new methodologies.
The NOIS3 contract will leverage various crowdsourcing tools and methodologies to identify potential strategies to address challenges. Some crowd-based methods that can be utilized include public prize competitions, freelance tasking and technology searches.
The base contract runs from June 5, 2025, to May 31, 2027, while the two option periods could extend the project until May 31, 2035.
The first iteration of the NOIS program was launched in June 2015, with 10 awardees securing spots on the contract. Another 19 vendors were selected for the follow-on contract in July 2020. The NOIS2 contract was awarded in May 2022, with 13 companies selected.