NASA will exercise the fifth one-year option on a contract with CSC for supercomputing support services at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The option exercised on the cost-plus-award-fee contract is valued at about $62 million. It begins Aug. 1 and continues through July 31, 2014. The contract began Aug. 1, 2007, with a two-year base period and eight one-year options. Its maximum value will be $597 million, if all options are exercised.

CSC will continue to serve the agency’s primary high-performance computing facility, which is operated by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing division at Ames. The facility serves as the supercomputing pathfinder for the agency and develops and operates some of the largest, most advanced and productive supercomputers in the world.

The company may also provide supercomputing services to the Center for Climate Simulation at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and to other agency field centers as needed, says NASA.