And just as an extraordinary telescope will require technical innovation, getting the telescope built on time and on budget has challenged NASA to develop a novel procurement process that will save months and money.

About June 30, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., will award two $12 million contracts for competing designs for the Next Generation Space Telescope - one of the most ambitious astronomy projects the agency has ever undertaken.

The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) will feature the largest mirror ever used in a space observatory -- a mirror with more than 10 times the light gathering power of the Hubble Space Telescope mirror.

The contracts are part of an innovative procurement process that strives to identify, develop and integrate new technology into a program under strict cost constraints." Developing the best procurement strategy for the NGST mission requires taking all phases of the mission into account, from concept and technology development through construction, launch and operations," said Gifford Moak, Contracting Officer for NGST.

"The procurement concept for NGST is like selecting a building contractor for a house when you want to consider many possibilities," said Moak. "You specify general requirements - the maximum price, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and so forth. But to encourage innovation, the details are left to the contractor. The huge but extremely light mirror on NGST will be a complete departure from what has been done before, so we want to preserve our options."

A streamlined procurement process was devised for NGST that features a concept called "phased procurement." This novel procurement tool allows the mission to proceed from one phase (design) to another (build) without a major break in between.

"The seamless phased procurement process has major benefits," said Moak. "First, it reduces the administrative burden, in time and money, imposed on the NGST project by the source selection. Second, it promotes continuity in funding and effort. Since NGST requires so much new technology, we would like to retain a core team of seasoned experts through the life of the project."

Moak said the typical source selection process requires competing contractors to halt work on a mission for up to a year while the government chooses the contractor who will be awarded work for the next phase of the project.

"The new phased procurement, which we call a progressive down-select approach, has no halt in project work while the source selection is in progress," said Moak. "We speed up the process and retain the expertise needed to build NGST for an affordable cost."

The two NGST phase one contracts to be awarded the end of June will last approximately two years. The selected contractors will be responsible for certain products, or deliverables, over the course of the two-year contract.

The deliverables include a detailed design concept and a technology development and infusion plan that will demonstrate how the contractor will ensure that the technology needed for its design will work and can be built given the NGST cost constraints.

The technology plan also will demonstrate what steps have been taken to reduce technical risk. Other major deliverables under phase one include a cost and management plan, which, respectively, demonstrates how the contractor will build its design under the NGST cost constraints and describes innovative project management techniques that will be employed to reduce cost and risk.

Towards the end of the phase one contracts, the NGST source evaluation board will begin the process of selecting a single design for the telescope that will be built under phase two of the NGST contract. " Although the main components of the designs will be complete, there will be details to consider, so the contractors will be able to continue working while the phase 2 source selection is underway," said Paul Geithner, associate systems engineer for NGST.

Contractors not selected for phase one are still invited to compete for phase two, with the understanding that their design work and other phase one requirements will not be funded by NASA.

"NGST will employ the largest mirror ever used in a space telescope, which requires that it be extremely lightweight, and probably made from smaller segments that can be deployed in space automatically," said Geithner.

"This necessitates radically new technology. Additionally, the telescope's final location in space will be one million miles from Earth, so it cannot be repaired on orbit the same way we do today using the Space Shuttle. Finally, it must be built under a strict, cost-capped budget, for less than one quarter that of the Hubble Space Telescope. This requires a new approach to procurement, one that reduces technical and cost risk," Geithner added.