Questions and Answers Batch 3.pdf

Question # Question Government Response 1 To plan and acquire services from provider constellations, users need almanacs that provide coarse orbital information for each of the provider nodes. This covers the full LunaNet constellation across all providers.

QUESTION: Can the government please clarify which SRD requirements apply to each contractor lunar relay system, versus aggregated NSN constellation (composed of multiple providers)?

The offeror shall address all the Lunar Relay SRD requirements in its entirety.

2 The Lunar Relay Service shall provide pseudorange (PR) and 1-way forward Doppler reference signals with signal-in- space-errors (SISE) contributions as specified in Table 3-11 or better.

QUESTION: Will the government please consider phasing the SISE requirements so that future infrastructure or interoperable nodes can be used to meet the requirement? Will the government make any infrastructure available to aid in meeting navigation accuracy requirements?

Offerors should propose current or planned capabilites and solutions that meet or exceed the functional and performance requirements for the proposed subcategory.

3 See CVM-6 and CVM-7

QUESTION: Can the government please define the difference between verification and validation in the context of the CVMs?

CVM-6 has requirements through IOC Incremenct B while CVM-7 includes requirements through all IOC Increments A, B and C.

4 Question: For SOW sub-categories 1.1 and 1.3 may the offeror assume that any single RF aperture which meets the appropriate SOW Table single band requirements + autotrack meets the NSNS overall requirements?

Offerors should propose current or planned capabilites and solutions that meet or excced the functional and performance requirements for the proposed subcategory.

5 Background: There are no requirements found for Optical in the MDWB and an option for optical requirements (as an option for DTE).

Question: Would NASA please confirm requirements for Optical for DTE Per SOW?

Optical requirements are stated in the SOW. The MDWB is a reference document depicting current and anticipated known mission requirements.

6 Background: During the previous industry day events NASA suggested that contractor formats for External Interfaces (Service Management) are acceptable.

Observation: the solicitation suggests that the Government's position may have changed such that the NASA specified standards in the SOW (i.e.

Section 4.1.5 Scheduling Requirement Formats) are now required.

Question: Would the Government consider removing specified scheduling formats or clarify SOW documentation to remove conflicting guidance.

The Contractor shall collaborate with the Government to define Interface Control Document (ICD) amongst Contractor systems, NSN systems, and user missions. The ICD developed by the Contractor, in collaboration with the Government, will capture the complete set of data service standards for each service interface.

7 The end of this section discusses that, “The Contractor shall support the Government during onboarding of new missions by NSN.” Does NASA expect contractor to describe onboarding duration, or does NASA have an expected minimum or maximum duration associated with these activities?

This requirement is duration agnostic. On-boarding activities durations are driven by multiple dynamic factors.

8 Does each mission in the MDWB represent an individual Operations Services contract, or are they part of the Capability Validation Task Order final on-orbit validation milestones?

The MDWB is a reference document depicting current and anticipated known mission requirements.

9 Can NASA point to current location of, or add the referenced IONet documentation to the e-library?

References to IONet documentation will be removed from the SOW.

10 For IOC-C and EOC, is it required to have the capability to provide service to two users distant from each other at the same time and within one band (S or Ka band)?

The number of simultaneous links within each band are specified in this requirement.

11 It appears that optical links are not required as part of this original solicitation – rather this initial solicitation is focused on RF communications (with IOC-Alpha in 2025, IOC-Beta in 2027 and IOC-Charlie 2028). Are earth (or earth orbit) to lunar optical links still envisioned for EOC past 2030? Will optical comms be part of a future on-ramp?

Offerors should propose current or planned capabilites and solutions that meet or excced the functional and performance requirements for the proposed subcategory.

12 Would relay of RF through a LEO/MEO/GEO commercial satellite be considered Category 1 or Category 2? Note the commercial relay thus envisioned would be (Earth) to (commercial LEO/MEO/GEO) to (Artemis spacecraft, relay spacecraft orbiting the moon, or lunar base with visibility to earth).

The sub-categories in NSN Services procurement are indicative of space regions where the customer missions are located. The proposals should be submitted in the sub-category correlating to the space region where the missions being served are located. The assets providing the services may or may not be located in the same space regions.

13 For the onboarding of new missions and new capabilities, will the contractor be allowed to update the Not-To-Exceed (NTE) price per minute rates in the contract if the new mission requirement and/or capability exceeds the NTE submitted with the RFP response? If a new mission requirement or capability exceeds the NTE will we be allowed to make changes in the future?

For unclassified task orders, the Contractor shall use only those appropriate contract price per minute rates, which may be less than but shall not exceed the rates found in Attachment B, to calculate the proposed price for all task orders issued in accordance with the “Task Ordering Procedure” clause of this contract. For classified task orders or other mission unique task orders, the contractor shall prepare proposals based on its current price estimates, in accordance with the “Task Ordering Procedure” clause and the “Ordering Procedures” text of this contract.

14 Background:

Amendment 0001 and RFP Section L.19(b)(1) table lists: “All pricing and estimating techniques utilized to price the IDIQ Fixed Price Matrix (Operational Services)” as having a page limitation of “Not to Exceed 2 pages”.

Clarification Questions:

Is the entire write-up for Volume III limited to the 2 pages or just the offeror’s section on estimation techniques? If the offeror has other sections (such as an introduction) are these excluded from the 2 page limit?

If the intent is for the entire Vol III to be limited to 2 pages, would NASA please consider increasing this limit to 4 pages?

Justification:

It is difficult to include all relevant information in 2 pages as a standalone Volume.

Only the Offeror section on estimating techniques is limited to NTE 2 pages.