Attachment 1 SETS BAA Call 001 Statement of Objectives.pdf

Attachment 1 Statement of Objectives (SOO)

SETS BAA Call 001

Geospace Environment Technologies and Science

This CALL is specifically requesting potential Offeror(s) to provide interdisciplinary, integrated proposals addressing Topics 1-5 from the Space Environment Technologies and Science (SETS) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA).

This effort outlined by this CALL does not represent separate, discipline scientific and engineering activities. The Government's existing and planned contracts and in-house research teams have produced and continue to produce substantial discipline knowledge and technologies. The objectives of this effort relate to the interdisciplinary development and integration of those products and products of the greater research community leading to innovative new space environment awareness, mitigation and exploitation capabilities for the joint warfighter. In such a body of work, the various research activities are expected to be tightly coupled, with requirements from one aspect driving scientific investigation of another, with the combined results feeding into novel technologies. These new capabilities must be cost-effective, and new ideas that build on existing capabilities and investments will likely prove advantageous.

The Offeror must achieve this objective by integrating and coordinating, simultaneous activity in several interrelated areas, including the research, development, and evaluation of advanced techniques for the observing/sensing, collection, transport, processing, and storage of terrestrial and space system geophysical data needed to support novel capabilities, including the planning, scheduling and evaluation of collection schemes. Such efforts should advance the Government's existing techniques, as well as enable new capabilities, and must specifically include the exploitation of:

Past and Upcoming AFRL Space Experiments: AFRL Demonstrations and Science Experiments and in-situ instrumentation, payloads, and flight experiments to characterize the composition, chemistry, and dynamics of the upper atmospheric and ionospheric environment, to include natural and artificial disturbances, as well as assess and characterize impacts to military and civilian communications, navigation, and surveillance systems.

Other space missions addressing elements of the space environment, including operational systems such as Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate-2 (COSMIC-2), Weather System Follow-on Microwave (WSF-M), other energetic charged particle (ECP) observing missions

These missions are designed to exercise and mature sensors and systems capable of measuring the energetic charged particle and ionized environments. They will operate in concert with ground sensors intended to enable the next-generation of space environment specification and forecast, including magnetometer or variometer systems, passive ionospheric sensors, enhanced sounders, radio frequency (RF) beacons or transponders, antenna array-based systems, and ground receivers. The efforts should advance the Government’s development of novel sensing techniques, data quality control algorithms, and integration into data assimilative models. The efforts should also evaluate constellation and sensor deployments with regard to environment hazards to inform future sensing architectures. Using such data sets obtained from space-based sensors operating in concert with ground-based sensors, design and evaluation of integrated space environment modeling techniques that exploit multiple measurement platforms, phenomena, and environmental domains to provide integrated, statistical predictions and specifications needed to support next-generation capabilities for next-generation system operation and design.

The efforts should advance the Government's prediction and specification ability for the environment, interact where appropriate to enhance non-environmental specifications and prediction capabilities, as well as provide new capabilities. In addition, research objectives should progress describing the environmental impacts on spacecraft operations and electromagnetic propagation and quantify degradation and interference from perturbations. Specific target applications for development and/or insertion of new capability include:

Ionospheric specification and forecasting including global and regional Total Electron Content (TEC) and bottomside attributes, irregularity structure models including E region and high latitude phenomena, scintillation analyses, extension to all latitudes, and at scales relevant to RF propagation and impacts

High-latitude ionospheric driver specification (i.e., plasma convection, particle precipitation, and thermospheric winds), including possible improvements to climatology and real-time data driven schema.

Local space environment situational awareness models and tools to identify and attribute environmental risks to spacecraft operation including spacecraft hazards and spacecraft RF systems

AFRL’s RF Attribution and Interference Detection system for identifying and attributing environmental effects and hazards to spacecraft RF systems

AFRL’s International Radiation Environment Near Earth (IRENE) model including current component models AE9, AP9, and SPM for energetic Electrons, energetic Protons, and Space Plasma Model, respectively, and future component models such as the SAPPHIRE-2S solar proton model

Outer zone radiation belt models such as the Versatile Electron Radiation Belt (VERB) model and GPS-based Outer Zone Model

Inner zone proton models such as the Selesnick Inner Zone Model (SIZM) Spacecraft charging assessment tools and models such as the NASA/Air Force Spacecraft

Charging Analysis Program (Nascap-2k) Physics-based improvements for magnetospheric specification and forecasting models such as

AFRL’s Magnetospheric Specification and Forecast Model (MSFM) Solar forecasting models and tools such as the Solar Indices Forecasting Tool (SIFT), Air Force

Data Assimilative Photospheric Flux transport (ADAPT) model, and solar energetic particles (SEP) Forecasting System

Techniques to forecast, mitigate, or exploit impacts of the space environment on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) systems

AFRL’s Special Transport and Chemistry (STC) model investigating the dynamics of artificial plasma clouds

Modeling of high-altitude nuclear explosion-produced artificial radiation belt impacts and remediation

Cislunar environment climatology and modeling including magnetotail plasma dynamics

The combined sensing and modeling products will be refined, extended and validated through laboratory experiments with ionospheric, thermospheric, magnetospheric and heliospheric applicability, to include basic and applied research project tailoring and execution; the design, test, prototyping and demonstration of novel space environment monitoring and observing systems; the design, test, prototyping and demonstration of novel space environment mitigation and exploitation technologies;

fundamental and applied space environment chemistry experiments, including in the field; and the study of space plasma dynamics, material aging and characterization, component qualification, and spacecraft charging. To accurately simulate the charged particle environment of space and study its interaction with the materials and systems intended to operate therein, the efforts should support the Government in developing test facilities and methodologies to accurately mimic the space environment to more rapidly evaluate materials and systems in ground-based testing to facilitate the rapid adaptation of novel materials/technologies, reduce risk, calibrate environmental sensors and create a more agile pathway for new space technologies. This development is critical to the rapid deployment of space-based assets. The efforts will also assist the government in the development of international environmental testing standards that will standardize the protocol by which a material will be brought to market.

The integrated sensing and modeling techniques should be driven and exercised by next generation space environment impact prediction, visualization and attribution technologies that combine, as appropriate, solar, solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere observational data, integrated environmental models, and engineering data to provide enhanced awareness, predictive capabilities, and mitigation and exploitation courses of action. This research, development, design, and evaluation effort should enhance the Government's existing space system awareness and planning capabilities, as well as enable new capabilities. These new technologies must in-turn consider compatibility and interoperability with the larger Air and Space Forces’ toolset for planning, situational awareness and command and control (C2). Specific types of impacts include upsets, degradation or interference to space vehicles or their payloads and radio frequency systems, including but not limited to communication and surveillance applications. Gains over the current state-of-practice at this end of the utility chain are the ultimate goal of this work.

The Government's objective in this effort is to build upon the current state of the art by specifying and predicting the space environment, expand where necessary the current state of the science, including with artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques, and ultimately to advance the Air Force's operational capabilities to predict, specify, mitigate and exploit the space environment. In particular, this effort will perform cross-disciplinary research and development to integrate models, data and tools across the solar, heliosphere, magnetosphere, thermosphere and ionosphere domains to meet Joint Force needs, including the investigation, design and evaluation of new measurement, modeling, mitigation and exploitation techniques and tools, and the definition of interfaces for those capabilities to the larger Air and Space Forces’ toolset. These interfaces will demand consideration early in the development cycle of interoperability and information assurance equities. The results of this work will be captured in reports, computer software products, and data sets/models key to advancing the Government's science and technology efforts in this area and leading to transition of new capabilities into DoD operations or to industry partners for further technology maturation.

The integrated, cross-disciplinary and tightly-coupled nature of these efforts is likely to require and encourage teaming between offerors in order to meet the Government's requirements. Responsive offerors will demonstrate depth of knowledge in and breadth of knowledge across the relevant discipline areas, experience in integrating research across those disciplines, and experience in the development of advanced technology from those integrated results. Professional software development capability and experience are also required, as is experience with space environment sensor design, data handling, processing and analysis of results from space flight experiments.

Given the inherent uncertainties in research and development and, in particular, the type of integrated effort described here, the Government fully expects that various approaches and efforts will advance at different rates or fail to advance in the manner originally envisioned. It is further recognized that by the nature of any Research and Development effort, work attempted to include this requirement, could change and or advance through new discoveries or by the use of differing methodologies to arrive at an acceptable and usable solution. Additionally, be advised that through the advancement and new directions of the work encountered, additional work, time and funding may be utilized to continue and mature the research and development of this requirement to a level where it is acceptable and functional to the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Government. It is anticipated that substantial Government-contractor communication and flexibility will be needed to fully achieve the goals of this effort, and that specific objectives or tasks may require alteration, extension, or elimination as the state-of-the-art advances.