Sarah C. Odom

Sarah C. Odom serves as a key procurement lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she manages complex acquisitions supporting the development and integration of advanced space systems and scientific instrumentation. Her work directly enables the Center’s mission to advance Earth observation, deep-space telecommunications, and planetary science through the acquisition of high-precision hardware, research services, and mission-critical technologies. Odom specializes in procuring engineering and R&D services, specialized instrumentation, and mission-enabling equipment, often navigating stringent technical requirements and mission-critical timelines typical of NASA’s spaceflight programs. She maintains consistent partnerships with top-tier research and technology providers, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Aerospace & Commercial Technologies, LLC, reflecting a preference for institutional and niche industrial collaborators with proven expertise in space-grade systems. Her contracting patterns emphasize long-term, mission-aligned vendor relationships, often involving technical collaboration beyond traditional procurement, ensuring alignment with NASA’s scientific and engineering objectives. These partnerships frequently involve cost-reimbursement and time-and-materials contract types suited to high-risk, high-reward R&D environments. Odom’s procurement portfolio demonstrates a strong commitment to small business participation, with over 30% of awards structured as total small business set-asides under FAR 19.5. While the majority of contracts remain open to all competitors, her consistent use of small business set-asides underscores a deliberate strategy to foster innovation from emerging aerospace and engineering firms. She does not rely on 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB set-asides as primary tools, instead prioritizing broad small business eligibility to expand the supplier base for specialized technical capabilities. Her primary procurement focus lies in NAICS 541715 for physical and engineering R&D, with significant activity in 333517 for machine tool manufacturing and 334515 for precision electrical measurement instrumentation. These reflect a technical domain centered on space-qualified sensors, calibration systems, and mission-specific fabrication capabilities, aligning closely with Goddard’s core competencies in Earth and space science instrumentation development.