Columbus is proud and honored to announce that it has won the 2019 Goddard Subcontractor of the Year Award for providing excellent system engineering support for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission on the Ground Systems and Missions Operations II (GSMO-2) contract as a subcontractor to KBRWyle. This year, LRO experienced a lunar eclipse that lasted more than 4 hours. Columbus engineers were instrumental in analyzing eclipse conditions, spacecraft configuration, and managing recovery details. The Columbus team also supported the successful location of Chinese and Israeli lunar landers by LRO. At Goddard, in addition to LRO, Columbus also supports mission-critical systems for the Earth/Space Science Mission Operations (ESMO/SSMO) and the Earth Observing System (EOS) Data Operations System (EDOS) projects for science data capture and dissemination. EOS missions include Terra, Aqua and Aura satellites.
Columbus has been serving NASA since 2004, providing support at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) through GSMO-2, NASA End-user Services and Technologies (NEST), Engineering Services and Science Capability Augmentation (ESSCA), Deep Space Network – Operations & Maintenance (DSN O&M), Temporary Technical and Professional Services (TTAPS), JPL Data Systems Implementation and Operations (DSIO) and several other contracts. Columbus brings Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level 3 and International Organization for Standardization 9001:2015-certified processes, a highly-experienced leadership team, a deep understanding of NASA’s complex projects and missions, and expertise in science, engineering and program management. In 2019, Columbus surpassed a major milestone, providing 1 million person-hours of engineering support work at JPL without a single lost-time injury.
Looking to the future, Columbus sees NASA as a trusted partner and a top strategic priority due to the importance of exploration and scientific discovery. We plan to substantially increase our support to other NASA centers. We have invested resources pursuing future opportunities at GSFC, MSFC, AFRC, JPL, Glenn Research Center (GRC), and Ames Research Center (ARC). Recently, we opened a Corporate Center of Excellence in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a technology demonstration incubator and for training our NASA support staff. We are planning to develop an Engineering Innovation Center to support future JPL, ARC, AFRC, GSFC, GRC and MSFC efforts. Columbus is also opening a new office in Huntsville to provide local support MSFC and the Redstone Arsenal.