Mitchell Vantage Systems won the $359 million contract to support missions from Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Goddard is home to operations for the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. The center also manages operations for dozens of satellites and the Mars Curiosity Rover, and helps connect Mission Control with astronauts on the International Space Station.
The company that was awarded the contract is a joint venture between MCSG Technologies and Vantage Systems Inc. MCSG CEO David Mitchell is no stranger to government and defense contracts. About five years ago, MCSG won a $150 million contract to support what would later become the U.S. Space Force.
“It kind of made our eyes pop out a little bit,” Mitchell said. “But then, a $360 million contract kind of gets your blood moving.”
Most of the work will occur at NASA facilities using people already employed there by the current contractor, but Mitchell said he has plans to hire more people for his office locally.
At Goddard, the software designers and engineers he’ll hire under the contract will have major responsibilities for ensuring the space program is successful.
“This is all the software to support going to the moon, the navigation software, all the algorithms that go into determining the launch patterns,” Mitchell said. “So it’s pretty exciting stuff.”
Mitchell got his start buying products for retail outlets. He later worked for Boeing at Tinker Air Force Base, performing logistics and procurement work. Mitchell launched his own company in 2005.
“Most of our work early on was with Indian Health Services. I had minority status and so that kind of opened the door to get into the contract business,” he said.
He later landed a contract at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Mike Monroney Center in Oklahoma City, supporting a larger contractor.
Mitchell Vantage Systems isn’t the only Oklahoma company involved in the U.S. space program. Frontier Electronic Systems in Stillwater has designed, built and tested components for NASA’s next launcher vehicle and the Orion capsule.
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