Draft Request For Proposal (DRFP) Cover Letter Rev 1.pdf

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD 20771

June 29, 2022

Reply to Attn of: 176.1

TO: All Potential Offerors

SUBJECT: Draft Request for Proposal (DRFP), Solicitation No. #80GSFC22R0029, for Near Space Network (NSN) Services

You are invited to review and comment on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) NSN Services solicitation. The principal purpose of this NSN Services procurement is to acquire communication and navigation services for missions in near-space region (surface of Earth to 2 Million Km) for NASA and other federal agencies under two distinct categories:

Category 1 - Near Space Direct-To-Earth (DTE), which covers communication and navigation services for customer missions, spacecraft or payloads up to 2 million kilometers from Earth.

Category 2 - Near Space Relay, which covers communication and navigation services for customer missions, spacecraft or payloads up to 2 million kilometers from Earth.

The objective is to foster the commercialization of the Near-Space region through increased private sector participation in providing communications and navigation services in the Near Space region, including lunar communications & navigation services (DTE and relay) to support the NASA Artemis program. The Statement of Work, Attachment A, describes the scope of the requirement.

The award of NSN Services contracts will be based on the offeror’s ability to meet the specific technical acceptability standards set forth in this DRFP. Technical Acceptability is the most important factor and will be evaluated on a pass/fail basis. Proposals that fail to meet any of the technical acceptability standards identified in Section L of the RFP will be considered “Unacceptable” and will not be eligible for contract award (see DRFP provision “M.4 TECHNICAL ACCEPTABILITY STANDARDS EVALUATION FACTOR” for details on “Potentially Acceptable” proposals). For those offerors who meet all the technical acceptability standards, Past Performance and Price will be evaluated. Past Performance will be evaluated on a Level of Confidence basis. A price analysis will be conducted in accordance with FAR 15.305(a)(1) to ensure that a "fair and reasonable" price is paid by the Government. The proposed price will be evaluated at the master IDIQ contract level to determine reasonableness both from the perspective of a firm fixed-price validation effort and for a not-to-exceed price per minute of operational communications services. Past Performance is approximately equal in importance to Price for evaluation purposes.

Potential offerors are encouraged to comment on all aspects of the draft solicitation, including the requirements, schedules, proposal instructions, and evaluation approaches, any perceived safety, occupational health, security (including information technology security), environmental, export control, and/or other programmatic risk issues associated with performance of the work. Potential offerors should identify any unnecessary or inefficient requirements, and are also encouraged to comment on the DRFP CLIN structure, any unique terms and conditions, the clarity of the Representative Task Order (RTO) requirements and their ability to effectively price each RTO, and the Section M Evaluation Criteria.

Please note that while the Past Performance Volume instructions contained in provision L.26 include a reference to classified past performance information, however, this information is not needed for this competition.

This competitive acquisition will result in a Firm-fixed Price, Multiple Award, IDIQ Task Order contract. The contract(s) will have an effective ordering period of ten years (5-year base and one 5-year option period). The ordering period start date will be based on the first awarded Category (either Category 1 or 2, whichever occurs first). For contracts under the last awarded Category (either Category 1 or 2, whichever occurs later), the effective ordering period will be adjusted to align with the first Category award end date.

Additionally, the resulting NSN Services contract will include an “On Ramp” feature, which will allow for the original solicitation to be periodically re-opened in order to give vendors the opportunity to propose on the NSN Services Solicitation.

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 517410 and the small business size standard is $35M.

Potential offerors should ensure its company is listed in the online database(s) for the following:

(1) System for award management: https://www.sam.gov/SAM/

(2) U.S. Department of Labor Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, VETS-4212

Reports: https://vets4212.dol.gov/vets4212/

(3) Date Universal Numbering System (and the transition to the US Government’s unique entity identifier (UEI)): https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/organization/federal-acquisition-service/office-of-systems-management/integrated-award-environment-iae/iae-information-kit/unique-entity-identifier-update

The successful offeror must pass an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) clearance before contract award (See FAR 22.805).

The current planned release date for the Final Request for Proposal (RFP) is on or about September 2022, with proposals being due approximately 30 calendar days later. Upon the release of the Initial RFP, NASA will only be requesting proposals for the categories/subcategories identified below.

3. Please note a TOP SECRET/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI)

Facilities Clearance may be required for this acquisition in accordance with the DD Form 254, Contract Security Classification Specification. Selected vendors that successfully complete the validation process and are able to maintain a valid TS/SCI Facility Clearance throughout the life of their contract will be able to further compete for classified Task Order (TO) requirements. For proposals submitted as Joint Ventures, the facility clearance must be granted in the name of the Joint Venture.

4. Proposals for this solicitation are required to be submitted through NASA’s

Enterprise File Sharing and Sync Box (EFSS Box), a FedRAMP Moderate certified platform. Potential offerors, especially those that have not previously submitted a proposal utilizing NASA’s EFSS Box, are encouraged to review the solicitation instruction entitled “Electronic Proposal Delivery - Proposal Marking and Delivery Through NASA’s EFSS Box” which provides instructions related to the submission of proposal via EFSS Box. Offerors are encouraged to check with their corporate IT staff to determine if there are firewall restrictions that would need to be addressed prior to the submission of proposal files through NASA’s EFSS Box.

In order to control and protect sensitive data owned by the Government and its Contractors, NASA policy requires all acquisition-related documents be released in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

Documents related to this acquisition, including this letter, the solicitation, attachments, enclosures, exhibits, any amendments and links to online reference/technical/bidders library will be attainable electronically from the World Wide Web through the Government-wide point of entry website at www.SAM.gov. Potential Offerors are requested to periodically monitor the websites for updates.

NASA FAR Supplement (NFS) clause 1852.215-84, OMBUDSMAN, is applicable. The Ombudsman for this acquisition is Raymond Rubilotta, e-mail:

Raymond.j.rubilotta@nasa.gov, and phone: (301) 286-5867.

This DRFP is not a solicitation and NASA is not requesting proposals. This DRFP does not commit NASA GSFC to pay any proposal preparation costs, nor does it obligate NASA GSFC to procure or contract for this requirement. This request is not an authorization to proceed, and does not authorize payment for any charges incurred by the offeror for performing any of the work called for in this solicitation.

Any comments regarding the DRFP should be submitted electronically in writing, to Sang Lee, Contracting Officer, at Sang.H.Lee@nasa.gov, within 30, calendar days after the release of this DRFP. Industry questions that may potentially be addressed at the NSN Industry Day will need to be submitted to the Contracting Officer NLT July 20, 2022. If a respondent believes their comments contain confidential, proprietary, competition sensitive, or business information, those questions/comments shall be marked appropriately. However, questions that are marked as containing confidential, proprietary, competition sensitive or business information will not be provided a Government response. The Government will consider all comments received in preparation of the Final RFP. To the extent a comment leads the Government to revise the acquisition approach or requirements, the change will be reflected in the Final RFP. Some DRFP questions and comments may receive a posted response to the GPE if the Contracting Officer determines that a response would facilitate additional understanding of the solicitation. The Government may also respond via the GPE to comments and/or questions received following the issuance of the Final Request for Proposal

(RFP).

Sang H. Lee Contracting Officer

Enclosures:

Draft RFP #80GSFC22R0029