Amendment 0003 Questions and Answers.docx

BAA RV-10-02, Call 001, Amendment 0003 Space Situational Awareness Environmental Monitoring (SSAEM) Sensor Risk Reduction Questions and Answers

1. Question: Will the science products from an eventual mission using these sensors be made available to the scientific community? If so, will the data be restricted to US scientists and/or will the data be released after some pre-ordained period during which AFRL has sole access to the data?

Answer: Our immediate focus is on performing early sensor risk reduction by developing, building and testing these instruments. Consequently, the Air Force has not yet developed a detailed plan for how the SSAEM risk reduction sensors will be flown. Given this, it is premature to make any commitments regarding the disposition of science products that may result from a yet-to-be-defined flight experiment.

2. Question: Under Objective 2, both ion velocity measurements and electric field measurements are mentioned. Is it acceptable to propose an instrument that only measures ion velocity? If Electric field measurements are required, would the payload also include a vector magnetometer from another vendor to allow for retrieval of this measurement from the ion velocity vector and magnetic field vector?

Answer: The requirement for Objective 2 calls for an instrument that measures either ion velocity OR electric field, so the full objective can be met with an instrument that measures one or the other of these environmental conditions. However, offerors must propose a complete stand-alone capability—all the subcomponents needed to make the instrument fully functional must be included in the proposal.