The US government's space agency has began the process of sourcing companies to design and build a medium-size data center at a 100-year-old research center in Hampton, Virginia.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has on issued a “sources sought” notice earlier this week, seeking information about small businesses that can deliver the 40,000 sq ft data center and office building at the Langley Research Center, oldest of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) 13 field centers.

“This project [is] to provide a new data center that will be safe to personnel, protect mission critical assets,” the notice read.

The notice does not provide much detail about the project. The government uses sources-sought notices in its initial information-gathering stages before it embarks on large construction projects.

It did mention that the data center would need to be built to the Uptime Institute's Tier II infrastructure resiliency level, and that the project's magnitude would be more than US$10m.

Companies going after this project must be small businesses, which for the Army Corps means businesses $33.5m or smaller in size.

The Langley Center, located about 150 miles south of Washington, DC, was formed in 1917. The center mostly does aeronautics research, using more than 40 wind tunnels where its researchers study aircraft and spacecraft performance and safety.

NASA's IT leadership recently got in trouble after an auditor report concluded that the agency had not followed proper procedure when it contracted for public cloud services.