NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has awarded the Raytheon Company (RTN) a contract worth $240 million for five years to provide support to the Earth Observing Systems Data and Information System (EOSDIS).

The latest contract is the third competitively awarded contract that Raytheon has received to perform functions, including maintenance, operation and developing improvements for data access and system performance. The system is meant to receive, archive and make earth science data available to the scientific community across the world.

Dave Wajsgras, President of Raytheon Information, Intelligence and Services, said the company has been associated with NASA Goddard for past two decades when it comes to developing new earth science data solutions.

The system acts as a portal for space agency for earth science data that NASA and other international satellite missions provide. With the help of Raytheon, innovations are being made, so that user experience gets better and data sets are managed effectively.

Last year, the Raytheon-backed EOSDIS has managed as many as 8,292 unique data set requests; two million users and 27.9 terabytes per day of data distributed to end users. Under the new contract as well the company will continue to make improvements in data sets.

Other functions to be done include software maintenance and enhancement and development of applications to visualize data.

Todd Probert, vice-president for Mission Modernization and sustainment for Raytheon IIS, said, “The latest contract award demonstrates Raytheon's ability to deliver innovation on a key data processing system that has grown exponentially to 9.1 petabytes of data. Our focus is on making an enormous amount of data”.