NASA will exercise the fourth one-year option on a contract with Computer Sciences Corp. of Lanham, Md., to provide supercomputing support services at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The option is valued at about $60.3 million.

The option exercised on the cost-plus-award-fee contract begins Aug. 1 and continues through July 31, 2013. The contract consists of a two-year base period, which began Aug. 1, 2007, and eight one-year priced options with a maximum value of about $597 million, if all options are exercised.

The company will continue to support supercomputing services provided by the agency's primary high-performance computing facility operated by the Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames. The facility serves as the supercomputing pathfinder for the agency and develops and operates some of the largest, most advanced and most productive supercomputers in the world.

The contract is structured so the company also may provide supercomputing services to the Center for Climate Simulation at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and additional high-performance computing support to other agency field centers as needed.

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