Julie Dunne, commissioner of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service, said FAS is now moving forward with the e-commerce marketplace initiative after delaying the program during the first few weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, Federal News Network reported Friday.

She provided updates on the small business track of the $15 billion Alliant 2 contract vehicle for information technology services, which was awarded in December 2017.

Dunne said Alliant 2 is in the middle of litigation and that FAS hopes to share some developments in the next couple of weeks. “GSA’s leadership is fully committed to small business and making sure they are a part of our industrial base,” she added.

She noted that the assisted acquisition services pilot as part of the Small Business Innovation Research program is now permanent and helped expedite an award within the defense sector to address a supply chain risk management requirement.

Julie Dunne of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) will serve as a keynote speaker during Potomac Officers Club’s 2020 Procurement Forum on June 9th. Register here to join Potomac Officers Club for its 2020 Procurement Forum on June 9th.

Soraya Correa, chief procurement officer of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will also serve as a keynote speaker during the forum. During her keynote address, she will discuss the short term and long term strategies, acquisition, workforce initiatives, tech modernization and collaboration between government and industry.

Register here to join Potomac Officers Club for its 2020 Procurement Forum on June 9th.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a public statement Thursday saying that U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess data on potential origins of the new coronavirus and currently agree with the “wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”

The intelligence community said its experts respond to crises by coming up with intelligence on issues that are critical to national security and the IC has been offering support to policymakers and individuals who help in response efforts to fight the COVID-19 virus, which emerged in Wuhan, China.

“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” the statement reads.

The U.S. has reported more than 1M COVID-19 cases with over 62K deaths and more than 150K recoveries, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.

Vaneeza Rupani, a high school student from Alabama, has received the honor to name NASA's Mars helicopter, a small spacecraft that would support flight studies on the red planet.

She named the helicopter "Ingenuity" in her entry to an essay contest that originally sought what to call the next Mars rover, the space agency said Wednesday.

NASA received 2.8K entries to the Mars rover essay contest that was eventually won by Alexander Mather who coined the name "Perseverance."

The space agency then decided to look at the other entries for the helicopter's name.

"The ingenuity and brilliance of people working hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel are what allow us all to experience the wonders of space exploration," Rupani stated in her contest entry.

The solar-powered helicopter will demonstrate flight on the red planet. NASA has already docked the helicopter to Perseverance.

"Ingenuity encapsulates the values that our helicopter tech demo will showcase for everyone when it takes off next year as the first aircraft on another planet's surface," said Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator, who selected Rupani's entry as the helicopter's name.

NASA has partnered with the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to launch a “virtual hackathon” to support COVID-19 research and development efforts.

NASA said Thursday the Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge, which will take place on May 30 and 31, requires participants to leverage open-source and geospatial intelligence data for a range of research applications such as the assessment of coronavirus spread.

ESA plans to provide its artificial intelligence-based EuroDataCube platform as well as data from its Sentinel satellite missions as part of the effort.

According to NASA, the COVID-19 Challenge will focus on assessing human and economic response to the pandemic and serve as the Space Apps program’s first virtual iteration.

The space agencies will begin accepting applications for the hackathon in mid-May.