Acting on a formal protest filed with the Government Accounting Office in July, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is asking for its contract with a Texas firm to build a new spacesuit be cancelled.

    However, NASA’s action is only one step in the process of re-evaluating the $745 million contract, and is no guarantee ILC Industries, Dover, eventually may be awarded the job instead, said NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz.
 
   ILC has built spacesuits for NASA since the beginnings of the Apollo lunar program in the 1960s. It also manufactured suits for the Skylab, space shuttle and International Space Station programs.
 
   “That is correct when saying the contract will not necessarily go to the other bidder,” Schierholz said. “At this point, NASA has concluded corrective action is necessary and is recommending termination of the contract.

    “We will then work with the GAO to determine what corrective action will take place,” she said.

    Schierholz said a GAO protective order prohibited her from discussing the situation further.

    However, it was not unusual for the space agency to take this step, said Michael Golden, a general council for the procurement law division of the GAO.
 
   “They have identified a flaw in the procurement and they’ll correct that, then see where it takes them as far as the selection process goes,” Golden said.
 
   ILC filed its formal protest July 14, following NASA’s June announcement the contract had gone to Oceaneering International of Houston.
 
   Douglass Durney, director of marketing and new business for the Frederica-based company said in a July 30 Dover Post article the company wanted a better explanation as to why it did not get the contract. A post-selection briefing with NASA essentially raised more questions than it answered about the procurement process, Durney said.

    NASA’s request means its own review of the contract process indicated there was some sort of problem, and that under GAO rules, it first must ask the contract be cancelled. If the GAO agrees, NASA then will take action to fix the problems it discovered, Golden said.
 
   “NASA has re-opened the procurement process in a sense, and will re-evaluate and reassess that process,” he said.
 
   By acknowledging a problem and asking to cancel the contract, NASA frees itself of GAO regulations and concedes ILC’s protest, Golden said.
 
   Golden did not have a timeline for when the GAO would make a decision on the space agency’s cancellation request, but indicated such actions routinely are taken within 30 days.
    It then will be up to the agency to again go through the process of evaluating both ILC and Oceaneering’s bids and to make a second decision on who will build the new suits.
 
   The contract with Oceaneering was for NASA’s Constellation program, which will follow the space shuttle when it is retired in 2010. The new spacecraft is set to fly no earlier than 2015, and will continue flights to the space station as well as follow-on missions to the moon.
 
   The contract provided for suits and associated support systems for both types of missions.

Email Jeff Brown at jeff.brown@doverpost.com