NASA signs up supercomputing support

NASA has signed a deal with Computer Sciences Corp. for the provision of supercomputing support over the next decade.

The deal is initially for two years, with eight annual options, and could be worth up to $597 million if all the options are taken up by the U.S. space agency.

CSC plans to provide support services to NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division at the Ames Research Center, the research lab in Silicon Valley that operates some of the most advanced and powerful supercomputers in the world.

The deal will also provide support--as well as high-performance computing research--for the NASA Center for Computational Sciences at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md..

CSC has been working with NASA for about 40 years.

Tom Anderson, president of CSC's North American public-sector division, said the company is pleased to be helping advance the agency's "mission in pioneering the future of space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."