CSC’s Aerospace Legacy: A History of Aerospace & Defense at CSC

When Orville and Wilbur Wright launched the first powered flight on December 17, 1903, little did the brothers know they were also launching a new era in history. A century after that 12-second flight over the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, airplanes have revolutionized the way people travel the globe, fight wars and explore the universe.

Similarly, when Roy Nutt and Fletcher Jones founded CSC more than half a century later, they had no way of knowing that the company would grow into a global information technology corporation, one with deep roots in the aviation and aerospace industry. In 1959, fewer than 4,000 computers existed in the world. Yet information technology eventually would transform aerospace, and CSC would play an important role in that transformation.

CSC wins early aerospace contracts

CSC entered the aerospace industry in 1961 with a contract for support work at the Space Flight Operations Facility of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. Together, CSC and JPL created the computer system that guided and tracked telemetry data from unmanned lunar and planetary probes. This data, along with other JPL research, was a major force for the U.S. space effort.

Since that JPL contract, CSC’s contributions to the aerospace industry have been as varied as the company’s aerospace clients. Clients in other industries have benefited from the expertise CSC gained from its early aerospace work, most notably for NASA.

After our initial partnership with NASA at JPL, CSC grew its footprint to support nearly every NASA center across the country. Our legacy includes extensive science and engineering support as well as information technology, business process outsourcing and facilities management. In fact, CSC has supported more than 300 NASA missions since 1961.

Our long partnership with America’s premier space agency has been one of the most valuable assets the company has had over its history. With NASA, CSC gained experience in the application of technology for large, complex programs, and developed a contingent of key people who knew how to manage those programs.


CSC provides array of services

During the decades following the Saturn and Apollo successes, CSC expanded its role in aerospace, signing contracts with nearly every NASA center across the country, including Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, Stennis Space Flight Center in Mississippi, NASA Ames Research Center in California, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Over CSC’s history, the company has supported path-breaking NASA missions such as the Space Shuttle program, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. [Learn more about CSC’s flawless support for NASA space missions.]

CSC has done everything from handling base operations to placing a payload specialist, Dr. Ron Parise, in two Space Shuttle missions. Parise logged more than 614 hours and 10.6 million miles in space — on Columbia in 1990 and on Endeavour in 1995. Mark Brown, CSC’s other astronaut, spent 12 years as a NASA astronaut and manager, serving as a mission specialist on Columbia in 1989 and on Discovery in 1991. [Learn more about Ron Parise and Mark Brown.]

CSC has built upon its experience with NASA to support other government clients. During the 1970s, CSC embarked upon ambitious programs with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Its FAA work includes development and support of systems crucial to helping air traffic controllers maintain safe aircraft separation and manage overall traffic flows.

At the forefront of supercomputing

In the early 1980s, the U.S. Air Force asked us to develop the most advanced flight test system in the industry to support the testing of the B-2 stealth bomber. In 1989, CSC leaped to the forefront of supercomputing research with the award of a research contract at NASA Ames Research Center.

Leveraging the capabilities of our High Performance Computing (HPC) Center of Excellence , CSC provides full life-cycle HPC support to NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing Facility and the NASA Center for Computational Sciences. These centers provide more than 90 percent of the HPC capability across NASA.

As NASA’s HPC partner, CSC supports modeling and simulation efforts; performs code optimization; architects, integrates, and maintains high-end computing systems and high-speed networks; and provides user support to more than 2,000 science and engineering users across the United States.

For example, CSC worked with NASA to integrate one of the world’s largest supercomputers, the Columbia, which played a pivotal role in NASA’s return to manned space flight.



Read Part 2 of this article.