America.coTrace an award by its identity, not just a headline. Reconcile the public announcement with the official award record and the meaning of each amount.
Selected federal prime-award examples. This is not every federal dollar, a complete recipient portfolio, or a finding of fraud. Snapshot figures can change with later transactions. Method and limitations →
7 selected evidence records shown. All are readable without JavaScript.
Start with USAspending for an open award lookup. Search the contract number or recipient, select contracts, then verify the agency and unique award key. SAM.gov remains an official procurement source, but its public Contract Awards results require a signed-in account. An open opportunity is not proof that a contract has been awarded.
Read the evidence →Keep potential value, current value, obligations and outlays in separate columns. In the October 9, 2026 snapshot of NASA’s SpaceX Human Landing System contract, those figures are $5.849 billion, $4.404 billion, $3.229 billion and $2.896 billion respectively. They describe different things, not four competing answers to “how much was spent.”
Read the evidence →Choose the geography that answers your question. The CCtCap order NNK17MA01T reports a SpaceX recipient location in Los Angeles County, California, and a primary place of performance in Brevard County, Florida. Counting the award solely by recipient location would answer a different question from counting its reported work location.
Read the evidence →For an annual obligation total, sum signed transaction obligations whose action dates fall inside the chosen fiscal year. For NASA contract 80MSFC20C0034, 19 transactions dated October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025 sum to $221,721,145.05. The cumulative award obligation is $3,229,285,063.07. Those are different scopes.
Read the evidence →Keep negative obligations in the calculation and investigate their context. NASA’s ISS deorbit contract reports +$132,474,874.08 on July 2, 2025 and −$132,474,874.08 on July 7, 2025. Those two entries net to zero. The amounts alone do not tell us why the adjustment happened, establish misconduct, or prove the entire contract was canceled.
Read the evidence →A parent vehicle and its orders are different record levels. For CCtCap parent NNK14MA74C, USAspending reports 12 child awards with $4,101,857,376.01 in combined obligations. One of those orders, NNK17MA01T, accounts for $3,549,243,793.00. Do not add that order again to the already-combined child total.
Read the evidence →A zero count describes the records returned by the source, not every commercial relationship. The October 9 HLS award snapshot reports subaward_count 0 and total_subaward_amount null. The same record describes an individual subcontract plan. That combination is a reason to respect reporting boundaries, not to infer that no subcontracting exists.
Read the evidence →Select up to three records. This compares their evidence boundaries, not a popularity ranking.