Unless you have a serious hankering to live and work among the stars you probably don’t know much about the United Space Alliance. While it may sound like an international agency, or a group from a sci-fi TV show, it is actually a very real private company. For those of you who are not familiar with the United Space Alliance here is a look at how the company has chosen to describe itself, “Recognized performance. Efficient, reliable products and services. Innovative solutions for operating complex systems. This is United Space Alliance. We leverage our experience and expertise for customers in the defense, civil and commercial space, and energy industries. Our broad skill set uniquely qualifies us to help customers develop new concepts, systems and operations that will support today’s challenges on Earth and tomorrow’s exploration of space.”

The agency is hoping to do all of that without the help of almost 150 of its workers. The company has filed a Workers’ Adjustment and Retraining Notification or WARN notice to the state of Florida, which states that 148 workers are going to be getting the axe in the near future. A WARN notice is given to a state when a company expects to be making what is termed a mass layoff action.  For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

The company has been taking several hits since the space shuttle program was put on the back burner in order to help prop up the flagging US economy. The company is adding these layoffs to the more than 300 that they have already taken off of the payroll since the first of this month.

The company’s most recent release however was not about the layoffs, but instead was a harbinger of good news because the company has managed to secure a new contact which will bring in revenue, “NASA has awarded a one-year extension of the Integrated Mission Operations Contract (IMOC) to United Space Alliance (USA) to continue providing mission and flight crew operations support for the International Space Station and Exploration Programs. The extension provides support to the Johnson Space Center’s Mission Operations Directorate and Flight Crew Operations Directorate for mission planning and preparation, crew and flight controller training, and real-time mission execution. It raises the value of the contract by $17.4 million.” So who knows, given enough time the company may be able to find its footing and bring at least some of the soon to be displaced workers back on eventually.