NASA’s Mentor-Protégé Program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston recently connected Space City to Space Coast through a unique partnership to build better businesses to serve the aerospace community.

JSC will host executives of Jacobs Technology Inc., Houston, and HX5, LLC, Fort Walton Beach, Fla., in a partnership signing ceremony at 10:30 a.m. CDT April 15 at the center’s Rocket Park facility. Media may attend.

Speakers include Melanie Saunders, JSC associate director; Debra Johnson, director, JSC Procurement Office; Tabisa Kalisa, program manager, NASA Office of Small Business Programs; Pat Pilola, manager, Project Management and Integration Office; Lon Miller, senior vice president and general manager of Jacobs; and Margarita Howard, president/CEO of HX5. 

The 36-month agreement marks the fifth mentor-protégé agreement overseen by JSC and the third of its kind with Jacobs Technology. Jacobs will provide HX5 mentorship and training in technical and business areas. The technical development will enhance HX5’s ability to meet the needs of NASA JSC engineering and increase the capabilities of the HX5 pool for future contracts with NASA and other federal agencies. Business mentoring like business development, proposal development and purchasing system will enable HX5 to increase performance on current contracts and further develop its capability to pursue future contracts with NASA or other federal agencies.

Jacobs Technology Inc. is the technology arm of Jacobs Engineering Inc. and one of the nation’s largest engineering and technical services companies. Jacobs received the prestigious NASA George M. Low Award in 2010 for premier quality and performance.

Jacobs provides support to NASA facilities across the U.S., including the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and Ames Research Center in California, in rocket propulsion testing, scientific and applied systems research, maintenance and testing and construction management.

Under its previous Engineering & Sciences Contract with JSC and its current JSC Engineering, Technology, Science (JETS) contract, Jacobs provides products and services in comprehensive engineering, design, payload development/integration, testing of spacecraft systems for human spaceflight, facilities management, operation and maintenance, business services and scientific research and analysis. 

HX5 provides professional research and development, engineering and information technology services. The mentor-protégé agreement between Jacobs and HX5 will support the JETS contract at JSC.

Established in 2008 by NASA’s Office of Small Business Programs, the NASA Mentor-Protégé Program allows NASA prime contractors opportunities to enter into agreements with small businesses and historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions under their subcontracting programs to establish long-term relationships, enhance technical capabilities and enable protégés to compete successfully for larger, more complex prime contract and subcontract awards. Johnson oversaw NASA’s first mentor-protégé signing agreement in April 2010.

For more information about NASA small business programs, visit: http://www.osbp.nasa.gov/

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:  http://www.nasa.gov

For information about NASA Johnson Space Center, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson