Hewlett-Packard has landed a $2.5 billion, 10 year contract with NASA to manage the bulk of the space agency’s IT infrastructure including personal-computing hardware, standardized software, peripherals and, more. According to the Bloomberg article, this will be a powerful windfall for HP as NASA is a hugely recognized fixture of advancing eras.

“It’s basically everything that’s plugged into the wall that’s IT,” Michael Sweigart, a spokesman for NASA, said in an interview. “This contract combines some services on a number of different contracts across the agency.”

This high profile win means good business for HP and radiant publicity. The flip side however, that Lockheed Martin which is the current service provider for NASA is losing foothold, as it bid on the same contract HP won. “Our team is disappointed that NASA selected another solution,” Sheila Collins, a spokeswoman for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg. “We submitted a ‘best-value’ solution based on our knowledge of the program and our understanding of NASA’s mission. We continue to serve NASA on other contracts.”

SiliconANGLE also covered the National Archives and Records Administration seeking “…a sole and authentic Hewlett-Packard contract to replace its current networking equipment” after it had reportedly purchased defective HP products from low bidders. The need for a contract comes after the Office of General Counsel couldn’t access their e-mails for a day as well as similar technical difficulties in the Office of the Archivist. Computer-based archives (as well as physical) are critical to smooth running of government and public organizations, so HP will have their work cut out for them. This deal, combined with winning the NASA contract, may display a new era for HP’s close work with government entities and could vault them into ever-increasing business opportunities as a result.

In other HP news, a new tablet running on webOS 2.5.1 is expected to debut at the Jan. Consumer Electronics Show. This news follows an earlier release of the web-browsing, e-mail and Facebook supporting HP Photosmart eStation-All-in-One printer.