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Partnering Opportunity forFormation-based Observations via Constellations of Unmanned Systems (FOCUS)

Agency: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Level of Government: Federal
Category:
  • A - Research and development
Opps ID: NBD00159454761989376
Posted Date: Apr 18, 2023
Due Date: Apr 27, 2023
Solicitation No: SS_LaRC_2023_ECI02
Source: https://sam.gov/opp/64163448f6...
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Partnering Opportunity forFormation-based Observations via Constellations of Unmanned Systems (FOCUS)
Active
Contract Opportunity
Notice ID
SS_LaRC_2023_ECI02
Related Notice
Department/Ind. Agency
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Sub-tier
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Office
NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER
General Information
  • Contract Opportunity Type: Special Notice (Original)
  • All Dates/Times are: (UTC-04:00) EASTERN STANDARD TIME, NEW YORK, USA
  • Original Published Date: Apr 18, 2023 05:51 pm EDT
  • Original Response Date: Apr 27, 2023 04:30 pm EDT
  • Inactive Policy: Manual
  • Original Inactive Date: Apr 04, 2028
  • Initiative:
    • None
Classification
  • Original Set Aside:
  • Product Service Code: AR11 - Space R&D Services; Space flight, research and supporting activities; Basic Research
  • NAICS Code:
    • 54171 - Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences
  • Place of Performance:
    Hampton , VA 23666
    USA
Description

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is hereby soliciting information from potential partners to participate in a proposal development activity that addresses the technical objectives, development, and demonstration of Formation-based Observations via Constellations of Unmanned Systems (FOCUS) in response to an Early Career Initiative (ECI) sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and released on April 13th, 2023. The deadline for partnering responses is April 27th, 2023.



The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) LaRC is seeking participation with this partnering synopsis from all interested U.S. and non-U.S. organizations, including educational institutions, industry, not-for-profit institutions, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as NASA Centers and other U.S. Government Agencies. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Other Minority Universities (OMUs), small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs), veteran-owned small businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, HUBZone small businesses, and women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) are also encouraged to apply. Additionally, in support of the Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, NASA is also looking to advance equity or remove barriers for members of underserved communities to access procurement opportunities. Underserved Communities include Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.



Participation by non-U.S. organizations is welcome but subject to NASA’s policy of no exchange of funds, in which each government supports its own national participants and associated costs.



The Early Career Initiative is an internal NASA call for space technology development and demonstration proposals that foster the next step in the professional development of early career NASA technologists by providing cutting-edge hands-on space technology hardware development opportunities. This initiative promotes creative joint partnering within highly collaborative work environments between the best and brightest NASA early career innovators and while teaming with world-class industry, academia, and other government organizations.



Proposing teams will include a core team, including NASA and external partner members and at least half of the core team must consist of NASA early career employees. A NASA early career employee must lead the project (Project Lead) and shall engage an experienced NASA mentor, and a STMD mentor who will be identified after selection of the project. Other roles (e.g., Project Manager, Project Scientist) can be filled by team members from NASA or partner. The general approach will be to employ agile systems engineering methods emphasizing working products, collaboration, iterative, hands-on testing, and responsiveness to change rather than formal process and documentation with milestone-based assessments including a continuation review at the development site and a final presentation to NASA Headquarters. If a project wishes to involve a foreign organization, prior confirmation is needed.





Teams must propose innovative space hardware-focused projects lasting no more than 2 years and costing up to $1.25M per year in total for all cost including procurement and labor.





NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is seeking partners to participate in developing proposals for and collaborating on potential Early Career Initiative (ECI) projects. LaRC is pursuing several topic areas that align with NASA’s space technology priorities and involve a variety of technical areas that could benefit from partnering.



Project FOCUS will expand the feasible scale, duration, and performance of earth and space science missions by developing autonomous coordination strategies for ground-, air-, and space-based observatories. The coordination framework will allow NASA to leverage distributed sensing to bridge the precision pointing gap between future science and technology goals and the current state of the art in observing technologies. Autonomous formation coordination will also reduce the workload of human operators required to execute large scale observation missions, potentially lowering the cost and extending the lifetime of such missions. Coordinated sensing platforms will consider each other’s position, orientation, and health status to adapt the overall system in real time to maximize science objectives. Multiple missions of interest to NASA could benefit from the availability of distributed cooperative precision pointing technologies such as:






  • Autonomous verification and validation of satellite data, such as in Operation Icebridge;

  • Increased pointing precision for optical communications in the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC);

  • The extension of aperture synthesis telescopes with spacecraft constellations for the observation of dim and distant objects of interest, such as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT);

  • The coordination of a star shade and its observing spacecraft for direct imaging of exoplanets; and

  • The acquisition of correlated atmospheric data.



Given the above background, partners can propose to the technical challenge provided below:




  • NASA is seeking academic partners to provide expertise in the design and autonomous control of small spacecraft equipped with cross and down-links, as well as scientific payloads. The design and autonomy of small spacecraft shall be supplemented with modeling and simulation environments that include orbital dynamics, communications among multiple spacecraft, as well as spacecraft and earth-based stations. Distributed collaboration, state estimation, and perception of autonomous systems that incorporate competency-aware software, dedicated to ensuring a satisfactory interaction between the autonomous systems and their human supervisors will be needed. Academic partners shall participate in laboratory demonstrations by providing support for demonstration planning, execution, and data analysis. Partners may also develop various proofs of concept and small demonstrations prior to and in support of project milestones.

  • NASA is seeking industry partners to provide earth and space science observation and communication payloads to integrate onto ground and air test platforms. The payloads shall be used to evaluate and demonstrate the applicability of the precision pointing coordination framework in satisfying relevant science mission requirements and objectives. Ideal industry partners shall have experience with small satellite simulation and integration and provide subject matter expertise to define relevant test environments and demonstrations. Industry partners are expected to collaborate with the NASA team in the simulation and integration of these platforms and tailor hardware solutions to the distributed coordination problem being addressed.





The partner must provide expertise in at least one of the fields described above and must have the personnel and facilities required to perform any necessary software or hardware testing. The ideal partner may also contribute some, but not all, work or resources to the project in-kind, which should be described within the partner’s proposal submission.





This partnering opportunity does not guarantee selection for award of any contracts or other agreements, nor is it to be construed as a commitment by NASA to pay for the information solicited. It is expected that the partner(s) selected would provide (at no cost to NASA) technical requirements, conceptual designs, technical data, proposal input, project schedules, and cost estimates. If the proposal is subsequently selected, NASA LaRC anticipates issuing contracts or other agreements to the selected partner(s) for the performance of the proposed tasks.





Partner selections will be made by LaRC based on the listed criteria:






  1. Technical Qualifications of the External Partner (30 points): This criterion evaluates the technical expertise/capabilities; and innovativeness of the external partner in leading and/or executing activities related to the topics above; and the resources (skills and time) that would be allocated to the potential proposal development phase.

  2. Management Approach (25 points): This criterion evaluates how the management approach is different from standard NASA practices, evaluates whether it represents a successful approach from another industry or organization and shows understanding of the alternative approach. The criterion will also explain how the management approach applies to your project and the degree to which it increases the probability of successfully executing the work plan. Assessment of the practicality and efficiency of the project schedule and requested resources.

  3. Teaming and Workforce Approach (25 points): This criterion evaluates the integration of capabilities across the core team members relative to the work plan.

  4. Agile/Kanban Approaches Used in the Past (20 points): This criterion evaluates the external partner’s past experience in developing and utilizing agile development principles: using development methods that emphasize working products; collaboration; iterative, hands-on testing; and responsiveness to change rather than formal processes and documentation. This criterion will also evaluate familiarity with and usage of Kanban boards for task tracking.



No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on SAM.gov. Interested firms are responsible for monitoring this website for the release of any solicitation or synopsis.



Interested firms having the required capabilities necessary to meet the above requirement described herein should submit a capability statement of no more than 5 pages indicating the ability to perform all aspects of the effort. The responses should use 12-point font for each technical area of interest (i.e. offerors responding to one or more of the mission elements may submit up to 5 pages per each element). Responses shall also address each of the evaluation criteria listed above. Resumes of key personnel and a cover page that clearly identifies the topic area addressed by the response do not count against the total allocated page count. Please advise if the requirement is considered to be a commercial or commercial-type product. A commercial item is defined in FAR 2.101.



All responses shall be submitted electronically via e-mail to Octavia Hicks at octavia.l.hicks@nasa.gov and to Matthew Vaughan at matthew.p.vaughan@nasa.gov no later than 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time April 27th, 2023, All procurement questions should be directed to Octavia Hicks.



This synopsis is for information and planning purposes only and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government nor will the Government pay for information solicited. Respondents will be notified of the results of the evaluation. Respondents deemed fully qualified will be considered in any resultant partnering selections for the requirement.


Attachments/Links
Contact Information
Contracting Office Address
  • HAMPTON VA 23681-2199
  • HAMPTON , VA 23681
  • USA
Primary Point of Contact
Secondary Point of Contact
History
  • Apr 18, 2023 05:51 pm EDTSpecial Notice (Original)

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