The ASA protest was based on several issues ASA felt were unfairly applied in the contract rebid. Those issues were:
1) NSF awarded the contract in part because of Raytheon’s solution to 24-7 satellite coverage at Pole Station. However, Raytheon did not price the cost of the solution. Furthermore, the bid criteria did not include that contractors provide such a solution. So ASA was downgraded for something they were not asked to provide.
2) NSF put more weight on Pole Station’s satellite coverage than on other areas which ASA received higher marks for.
3) In government contracts, after the final bid is made, there is supposed to be no further revisions of the bid, or communication between the government agency and the contractors. NSF conducted talks with Raytheon after the final bids were made.
4) Though the information was not made public beyond the courtroom, ASA believed that one of their employees was feeding information to Raytheon from within.
5) One of Holmes and Narver’s subsidiary companies (EG&G Technical Services) was sold during the rebid process. NSF suspected the loss of this resource would influence ASA’s capabilities, therefore they penalized ASA.