The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Near Earth Network Services (NENS) contract includes tracking and data- acquisition operations at GSFC; Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA; White Sands Complex, Las Cruces, NM; Merritt Island Launch Annex, FL.; Poker Flat, Alaska; McMurdo Station, Antarctica; and Guam.

Major elements of the NENS contract include administration of an integrated contract team for Space and Ground Networks operations and maintenance; hardware and software development; and systems engineering. The Space and Ground Networks provide virtually all communications for NASA’s earth orbiting spacecraft, including the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Earth Observing System satellites.

Caelum NENS supports includes operations, maintenance and sustaining engineering at the Simulations Operation Center (SOC) and the Compatibility Test Laboratory (CTL) located at GSFC; operations and maintenance of the tracking, telemetry, command and Space Shuttle air/ground voice systems at Merritt Island Tracking Station (MILA) at Kennedy Space Center; and 24/7 Security Guard protection at the White Sands Complex (WSC) in New Mexico.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Mission Operations Mission Services contract encompasses all flight mission phases including formulation, development and operations for prime mission and extended mission. This includes spacecraft flight operations, mission data collection

and distribution, mission services integration, systems engineering and development tasks, flight dynamics support and systems engineering, mission communications support, and mission-operations and flight-dynamics technology development and infusion. Caelum provides systems administration and IT security services to the Flight Software Support Group at GSFC. In addition Caelum provides Training and Certification support as well as Quality services.

Caelum has provided training and certification support to the Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC) at three NASA centers: Goddard Space Flight Center, Johnson Space Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The goal has been to maximize effectiveness at the lowest cost.

In addition to general enhancements to the CSOC training and certification program, such as extensive cross-training among CSOC sites and the facilitation of internet-ready tutorials, Caelum has aggressively developed creative and innovative approaches including:

• Negotiating an agreement to make available to CSOC employees use of an existing training contract between Lockheed and NETg. NETg is a premier, national online training company. Through this arrangement, CSOC employees gained access to over 250 courses on CD media covering topics such as Microsoft applications (Access, Excel, Microsoft Project), programming languages (UNIX, Java Script, Oracle), Cisco applications, networks, program management, and related of skills such as time management and assertiveness training.
  
  
• Arranging, through the U.S. Air Force Space Operations School (Colorado Springs, CO), for multiple CD courses including their Advanced Space Operations Course and their Space Reference Guide. This material covers topics including the space environment, space lift, orbital mechanics, satellite communications. Additionally, Caelum worked with the Air Force contingent in San Antonio to arrange special communications security (COMSEC) training for CSOC employees. This special training was a requirement in order to work in the CEF at Mission Control.
  
  
• Facilitating, through an association with the Aerospace Academy at San Jacinto Community College, the award of a state grant to provide training to aerospace workers at no charge to our customer. As a result, Caelum was able to enhance and advance the aerospace careers of over 250 additional CSOC employees in a wide variety of technical areas.

From April 1995 to March of 2000, Caelum supported the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) Computational Services Division (CSD) to perform R&D in systems directed toward spacecraft missions and science operations. This included:

• Super Resolution Developed software to produce super-resolved 3-D models of surfaces.
  
  
• Automated Software Engineering Developed advanced, high-assurance tools for automated software synthesis and automated software verification & validation.
  
  
• Personal Satellite Assistant Developed personal data assistants (PDAs) onto an autonomous platform capable of operating in the micro-gravity environment of the space station.
  
  
• Information Physics Supported applied research projects in the areas of optical data storage, optical information processing, and optical sensors.
  
  
• Research Technician Support Designed and fabricated cryogenic components of infrared array cameras and infrared spectrographs.

Caelum was an active participant in the Center's New Millennium Program (NMP) and in the development of a web-based collaboration and document sharing environment called Postdoc to serve some 700 NMP users. The system allowed document submittal in a variety of formats and translated them into a platform-independent format that could be viewed on virtually any type of computer. The system provided additional collaboration services that included action item tracking, email and mailing list management, document sharing, document history tracking, and a search capability.
Caelum provided solutions to several highly visible NASA computing and software development initiatives in support of the Access to Space Initiative, the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle Program, the Mars Pathfinder mission, and Deep Space One. Caelum role in developing the Remote Agent artificial control software for Deep Space One earned the Company the 1999 NASA Software of the Year Award.
Additionally, projections of costs at the beginning of the last year of the project indicated that a significant cost overrun could occur. Caelum changed program managers from one who had been technically oriented to one more skilled in cost management. The new program manager prepared detailed cost forecasts and held spending actuals to within 5% of estimates each month of the final year. As a result, the contract was closed out successfully, and no overrun occurred.