How to Become a NASA Supplier, and Who to Sell to First

A NASA supplier gets in through one of two doors. One is NASA's own procurement, which starts at its Office of Procurement and its Office of Small Business Programs.

The other is the subcontracting chain: the prime contractors and commercial space companies that hold NASA work and buy parts, materials, machining, testing, engineering services and software to deliver it.

Registering on the portals puts your name in a database. That's it. A person still has to pick your part or your service. That person has a title, sits at a center or a company, and needs to see specific proof before saying yes.

If you have no NASA history yet, I would start with a prime or a commercial space company. Why? Their supply chain team can approve you without a federal solicitation, and that first order becomes proof a NASA center takes seriously. The decision rules below cover the exceptions, such as a center that already knows your work.

Pick the market before you write a single message. For a would-be NASA supplier, that means knowing who signs, what proof they need and how many of them exist. The buyer map, the proof list and the market-size section below answer each one. National security space runs on its own rules, so I leave it out here.

What does becoming a NASA supplier actually involve?

NASA's Doing Business with NASA page names the Office of Procurement as the starting point and lists the other public doors:

That table hides two very different markets. In one, NASA is the end buyer and signs a contract with you directly. In the other, NASA funds programs, and much of that work reaches suppliers through other companies.

Both routes make you a NASA supplier. Only the first requires you to win a NASA solicitation.

Which NASA buyers should you target first?

Pick a single center before you think about the whole agency. NASA's Office of Small Business Programs sets out its own order of steps:

1. Connect with the office.
2. Find the small business specialist for the right center.
3. Match your company's primary NAICS code, the US industry classification number your company files under, to the codes that center buys under.
4. Look at the opportunity channels: SAM.gov, the acquisition forecast, active contract listings, SBIR and STTR, and NSPIRES, NASA's system for research solicitations and proposals.
5. Attend outreach webinars and events.
6. Do the homework, using the first-timer material NASA's small business office publishes.

The office also points to the NASA Center Industry Councils as a place to meet the people behind the buying.

If a local audience exists, start there. People open up faster to a supplier who works in their own city.

For a space supplier, "nearby" means the center closest to you plus the primes and commercial firms clustered around it. A machine shop down the road from a center should be talking to that center's people and its delivery partners before it writes to anyone across the country.

At a center, three kinds of people matter, and none of them is the general inbox:

1. Procurement contacts, who own the contract process.
2. Technical leads, who decide whether your part or service fits the program.
3. Small business specialists, whose job is to connect small firms with the right people.

The arithmetic behind choosing one center and one niche first is in how to pick a market.

How do you use the NASA acquisition forecast?

The NASA Acquisition Forecast lists procurements NASA expects to make. NASA's policy is to prepare it annually with quarterly updates. It covers anticipated procurements above the simplified acquisition threshold, the dollar level below which federal buying follows faster, simpler rules. So the smaller purchases are not in it.

The page also points to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's own list of major subcontract opportunities.

NASA attaches two warnings. Every projected procurement can be revised or cancelled. And the data is for planning only. It is not an invitation for bid, not a request for proposal and not a commitment by the government.

So read the forecast as a planning signal. It tells you which part of NASA expects to buy what, and roughly when, which is what a target list needs. Ask four questions of every line that touches your work:

Here is how one line becomes targets. The entry below is made up for illustration. Say a line describes engineering support for spacecraft avionics at one center, and you write avionics test software. That gives you three targets:

1. The center's small business specialist.
2. The avionics engineering lead on that program.
3. The subcontracts managers at the primes likely to compete for it.

What does the NASA FAR Supplement change for suppliers?

The NASA FAR Supplement (NFS) is NASA's official supplement to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the base rulebook for US government buying. Its index on Acquisition.gov runs from Part 1800 to Part 1899. Four parts deserve your attention before any outreach:

1. Part 1809, Contractor Qualifications.
2. Part 1819, Small Business Programs.
3. Part 1844, Subcontracting Policies and Procedures, the part most relevant if you plan to sell through a prime.
4. Part 1852, which holds the clauses and provisions that set contract terms.

The NFS sets the rules for who qualifies and how, so interest alone gets you nowhere. Know which parts apply to your route, read them with someone who handles government contracts, and get your proof tight before you contact anyone. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

Who actually buys from a satellite manufacturer or space supplier?

Outside NASA itself, the buyers are prime contractors, satellite manufacturers, ground systems firms and commercial space companies. Each runs its own supplier process, and each has two kinds of approval.

Technical approval and commercial approval come from two different people. The engineer decides whether your part fits the design. The subcontracts or supply chain manager decides whether your approvals, capacity and terms work. A message aimed at only one of them tends to stall, so plan for two people per account.

Finding the right titles starts with your past projects. Who actually signed off on each one? Write to those exact titles in the niche, and skip the generic "manager".

Primes and commercial firms usually add suppliers through their own supply chain process rather than a public solicitation, and their orders become your entry ticket later. A part delivered on a NASA program through a prime is heritage you can show a center.

Check both kinds of fit before anyone books a call. The method is in qualify before the calendar.

How big is the US space economy, and why does that matter?

The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes US space economy statistics that measure the contribution of space-related industries to the US economy, counting both private and government activity. The series has estimates of GDP, gross output, private employment and compensation for 2012 to 2023.

BEA says it will no longer produce these statistics regularly, so 2023 is the latest year.

Globally, PwC's 2025 analysis put the space economy at US$570 billion in 2023. It found commercial revenues made up almost 80% of industry activity as of July 2024. That figure is global and includes consumer services, but it shows how much of the industry runs on commercial money.

For outreach, the size that matters is much smaller. A narrow space niche, such as avionics test software for satellite builders, holds a countable number of right-fit buyers.

In mainstream B2B, 30-35 sales calls a month usually means contacting at least 10,000 people a month. A space niche may not hold that many right-fit people in total. A market that small rewards depth over width: more people at each account, longer sequences, and a second region only once the first runs dry.

Should you sell to NASA directly or start with primes and commercial firms?

First, if you have nothing a space buyer would accept as proof yet, build that proof before you contact anyone. Check your situation against these four rules from the top, and act on the first one that fits:

1. A center already knows your work, or you have delivered to a NASA program before: pursue NASA directly, and keep the primes warm in parallel.
2. A forecast line matches your NAICS code and your subsystem: open conversations with that center and with the primes likely to compete for it.
3. You are a small business with technology still in development: look at SBIR and STTR before a supply contract.
4. You have no NASA history but have delivered to demanding industrial buyers: start with primes and commercial space firms.

What I would not do: polish one machine-shop message to the perfect length and send it to the wrong title. It gets ignored. Good copy will not rescue a wrong list or a weak sender. And a single message never does the job. Plan for at least 5-6 touch points, ideally across more than one channel.

Rule 4 starts with your own client list. Who have you already served well? Find companies that look like them. If you have supplied precision parts to high-spec manufacturers, the closest lookalikes are the satellite and subsystem builders, and the agency comes later.

Before committing, I ask two more questions. Will you still want these buyers in three years? And will the tenth contract teach you something the first one did not? If both answers are no, pick another niche.

What should your outbound message prove to space buyers?

In space, the engineer checks your heritage before answering.

So the message has to carry the evidence. I write past clients, results and case studies straight into the message. For a space supplier, the proof is:

1. Flight heritage: which missions or programs your parts or code flew on.
2. Quality approvals: the certifications the buyer's supply chain team asks for.
3. Parts supplied: what you have made, for which subsystem.
4. Test evidence: the environments your parts have already passed.

Here is a made-up message from a hypothetical machine shop:

"Hi Dana, we machine thin-wall titanium brackets for satellite structures. Our brackets have flown on two Earth-observation satellites and passed their vibration and thermal-vacuum tests. Our quality system holds the aerospace certification your supply chain team will ask for, and I can send the certificate today. If you are qualifying new structures suppliers this year, would a 15-minute call with our quality lead help?"

Sentence 1 names the subsystem. Sentence 2 is heritage and test evidence. Sentence 3 is the approval the commercial side will ask for. The ask is small and goes to the right person. A software supplier follows the same shape, with the missions its code supported and the standard it was developed to.

How LinkedIn and email hand off is in my LinkedIn and email sequence.

If a buyer asks for custom engineering work before any order, build reusable proof instead. Write case studies with real outcomes you can send to every buyer.

Who you send to still matters more than any wording. I make that case in your list, not your email.

What is the practical outreach checklist for this market?

Work through these before the first message goes out:

1. Pick one NASA center and the cluster of primes and commercial firms around it.
2. Confirm your primary NAICS code matches what that center buys, and note every forecast line touching your subsystem.
3. Lead with one subsystem or service. Hold back the full capability list.
4. Name two titles per account: the technical approver and the commercial approver.
5. Build the list from a proper data tool rather than a scrape. The full method is in how to build a B2B lead list.
6. Put heritage, approvals and parts supplied inside the first message.
7. Get the LinkedIn profile of everyone in the sales process ready, because the engineer will look up your quality lead as well as the founder.
8. Plan follow-ups on LinkedIn and email over months, because forecast lines take a long time to become solicitations. From what I see in our own campaigns, the reply most often comes on the third follow-up, after a real gap since the last one.

The forecast tells you what NASA expects to buy. Who buys it from you is decided by the two people you named at each account, so build that list first. Then write.

Aiming to become a NASA supplier and want a hand naming the two people at each account? Book a call with me and we will start there.