The Award Recognized Quality And Performance

United Space Alliance (USA) received NASA's highest honor for quality and performance - the 2009 George M. Low Award - recognizing the company's commitment to teamwork, safety, customer service, and technical and managerial excellence.

The Low award demonstrates the agency's commitment to promoting excellence and continual improvement by challenging NASA's contractor community to be a global benchmark of quality management practices.

"The George M. Low Award is both highly competitive and highly coveted, so we are extremely proud and honored to receive this award," said USA President and Chief Executive Officer Richard O. Covey. "This achievement would not have been possible without our employees' focus and commitment to our nation's space program. They are the reason for United Space Alliance's outstanding record of safety and quality. They, with NASA, play a critical role in the ongoing success of our nation's human space exploration program."

The 2009 awards were presented Wednesday at NASA's seventh annual Project Management Challenge in Galveston, Texas. USA was recognized in the large business service category. Applied Geo Technologies, or AGT, of Choctaw, Miss., received the award in the small business service category.

USA provides ground operations, vehicle processing and logistics at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida; delivers specialty engineering and technical services at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; and designs and plans missions, trains astronauts, develops and verifies software, and executes mission operations at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Established in 1985 as NASA's Excellence Award for Quality and Productivity, the award was renamed in 1990 in memory of George M. Low, an outstanding leader during his 27-year tenure at the agency. Low was NASA's deputy administrator from 1969 to 1976 and a leader in the early development of space programs.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.unitedspacealliance.com