Notice ID: 80NM0025SS001
The NASA Office of JPL Management and Oversight (NOJMO) is hereby requesting information from potential sources to operate and manage NASA’s Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the purpose of effectively meeting special research and development needs. FFRDCs are operated, managed, and/or administered by either a university or consortium of universities, other not-for-profit or nonprofit organization, or an industrial firm, as an autonomous organization or as an identifiable separate operating unit of a parent organization. FFRDCs enable agencies to use private sector resources to accomplish tasks that are integral to the mission and operation of the sponsoring agency.
This sources sought notice seeks responses from qualified and interested potential sources that can demonstrate the experience and capability to manage limited to highly complex or first-inkind deep space and Earth orbiting exploration and science missions and instruments, including mission concept development, design, project management, systems engineering, and mission operations, particularly for those missions requiring: deep space communication and navigation; integration of radioisotope power systems; entry, descent, and landing on planetary surfaces; mobility on planetary surfaces; survival in extreme environments; and/or advanced Earth, Planetary and/or Astrophysical remote sensing, as well as space research and technology development. Potential sources will be required to enable scientific exploration by developing and maintaining the technical skills and infrastructure necessary to carry out projects in Earth orbit or deep space, and involves spacecrafts sent as orbiters to the Moon or other planetary bodies, robotic landers, rovers, and scientific observatories on permanent space trajectories or on sample return missions. Although instrument observations from and in space will be the primary tools for such explorations, investigations, science programs, ground-based research, and laboratory experiments shall also be required for successful mission development and execution. A broad range of hardware and software engineering, scientific analysis, deep-space telemetry data acquisition capability, and management effort are also implicit in space mission assignments. This support includes project tasks involving:
- Autonomous deep-space and earth-orbiting spacecraft or major subsystems
- Experiments, instruments, or other devices which may be carried as payload on spacecrafts and aircrafts in missions managed by others
- Ground based systems
- Advanced technology research and development that enable and enhance new space missions, shorten the mission development cycle, and speed the use of observation, model, and research results in the planning of future and the operation of current missions and systems
- NASA-sponsored research and analysis programs that carry out a program of competed and peer-reviewed basic and applied research and technology development in space and Earth sciences