NASA has a requirement to leverage the federal aviation administration (FAA) unmanned aircraft services (UAS) test sites to conduct research tasks into unmanned and autonomous flight technologies that…

This federal contract award is an order issued by the Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC), a civilian agency under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED). The contract, valued at $190,098, leverages the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) test sites to conduct research into UAS and autonomous flight technologies that will support AFRC's UAS integration efforts.

The contract is not set aside and is a firm fixed-price delivery order. GOED, as a state government entity, will provide a range of services to support AFRC's UAS research, including testing, development, and integration of UAS into the National Airspace System. This contract is part of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, which mandated the establishment of UAS test sites to facilitate the safe integration of unmanned aircraft. The State of Nevada, through its Office of the Governor, serves as the parent organization overseeing GOED's implementation of this contract as well as other federal grants and contracts awarded to its subsidiary state agencies and institutions.

NASA has a requirement to leverage the federal aviation administration (FAA) unmanned aircraft services (UAS) test sites to conduct research tasks into unmanned and autonomous flight technologies that will provide the center a contracting vehicle to award individual task orders for a full range of services to support the afrc UAS in the NAS office. The FAA modernization and reform act (fmra) of 2012, PL-112-95, required the FAA to establish a program to integrate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the national airspace system (NAS) at six (6) test ranges. The FAA authorized six test sites for the purpose of research, development, and testing of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) aircraft to support integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system (NAS). The expectation of the test sites is that they will bring unique capabilities and airspace features to the UAS community in order to facilitate the testing required to enable NAS access. IT is anticipated that as concepts, technologies, and test techniques mature, the test sites will provide expanded testing infrastructure including certificates of authorization (coas) for unmanned flight.