LISA ETU Telescope (JOFOC) signed_Redacted.pdf

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER (GSFC)

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

(JOFOC)

For LASER INTERFEROMETER SPACE ANTENNA (LISA) ENGINEERING

TEST UNIT (ETU) TELESCOPE

1. Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.303-2(b)(1) – Identification of the agency and the contracting activity, and specific identification of the document as a “Justification for other than full and open competition.”

This document is a justification for other than full and open competition prepared by

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center

(GSFC).

The procuring agency is NASA, and the contracting activity is NASA GSFC in Greenbelt, MD.

2. FAR 6.303-2(b)(2) – The nature and/or description of the action being approved:

This justification provides the rationale for contracting by other than full and open competition to award a sole-source contract to L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as L3Harris) for the design, fabrication, alignment, testing, verification, delivery, and associated post-delivery support services for the LISA ETU telescope.

3. FAR 6.303-2(b)(3) – A description of the supplies or services required, to meet the

Agency’s needs (including the estimated value):

As part of its contribution to the European Space Agency (ESA)-led mission, NASA GSFC will deliver to ESA the ETU telescope, flight units, flight spare telescopes, and spare components required for LISA. The telescopes are required to efficiently transfer laser power between optical benches across 2.5 million kilometers in order to transfer enough laser light between spacecraft. The telescopes must simultaneously receive and transmit the laser light without contributing path-length noise to the inter-spacecraft distance determination, with an allocation of ~1 pm/√Hz in the mHz band to each telescope. For the LISA mission, there is one (1) telescope associated with each of the two (2) proof masses on a LISA spacecraft, giving a total of six (6) flight telescopes in the constellation. This specific JOFOC acquisition is for the design, development, fabrication, alignment, testing, verification, and delivery of the LISA ETU telescope only, which will also be the qualification unit and possibly used as a flight spare. The telescope flight unit needs described above will be procured under a separate contract to be solicited later in 2026, since requirements will be better defined with significantly reduced risks once the ETU has been developed and fully qualified.

The resulting LISA ETU contract has a total estimated value of approximately $15.7M with an anticipated award date of December 2025 and a 27 month period of performance.

4. FAR 6.303-2(b)(4) – An identification of the statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition:

The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 10 U.S.C.

3204(a)(1), as implemented by FAR 6.302-1, “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.”

5. FAR 6.303-2(b)(5) – A demonstration that the proposed contractor’s unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the authority cited:

The rationale supporting the use of 10 U.S.C. 3204(a)(1) is the unique knowledge, experience, facilities, and capabilities that L3Harris possesses with the LISA telescope development described below:

L3Harris has a long history spanning over 60+ years of delivering aerospace and defense technology solutions, with over 200 missions flying L3Harris optical components and payloads currently in orbit. L3Harris has participated in many of NASA’s major missions, including Mercury, Apollo, Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Chandra, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Orion, and Roman Space Telescope (RST). L3Harris involvement with LISA began with the LISA Study Office funded design study in 2018 to L3Harris and Ball Aerospace & Technology Corporation, now known as BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems Inc. The purpose of the study was to examine the Government’s strawman optical and mechanical design and requirements, assess how it could be built, supply a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) cost estimate, and a list of risks for building the Structural Thermal Model (STM) and the Engineering Development Unit (EDU) telescopes. The information gained from the study led to a competitive procurement to produce the STM and the EDU telescopes for LISA, in which three proposals were received. Following proposal evaluations, L3Harris was awarded NASA GSFC contract 80GSFC20C0056 in 2020 for the development of the LISA STM and EDU telescopes.

L3Harris’ first telescope in the EDU telescope development program was the STM. It successfully demonstrated telescope build process and verified the design and material met the very demanding LISA stability requirements. The second telescope, known as EDU1, was built to meet all LISA requirements and demonstrated excellent optical performance.

L3Harris successfully demonstrated that an all-glass telescope meeting the extremely demanding LISA performance requirements can be built.

Only a highly experienced, uniquely qualified contractor with specialized expertise in optical systems and systems engineering will be able to meet the mission requirements of LISA within the defined mission timeline. Leveraging the existing procedures, equipment, and facilities at L3Harris will enable a successful design, test, build, and delivery of the LISA ETU telescope to ESA on schedule and within the budget constraints that would otherwise be impossible if another vendor was selected either to continue the current design and/or start

8. FAR 6.303-2(b)(8) – Description of the market research conducted, and the results, or a statement of the reasons market research was not conducted (e.g., urgent, and compelling requirement):

A formal Request for Information (RFI)/Sources Sought Notice (Reference RFI-NASA- GSFC-LISA-OTA was published on www.sam.gov on August 22, 2024 with responses due no later than October 4, 2024. The notice included a draft Statement of Work, Requirements Document, Reference Optical Design, Cover Letter, and answers to questions received from industry for the LISA Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA), which included the ETU telescope, the Qualification Unit, six (6) flight units, and two (2) flight spares. The notice requested all interested vendors to provide a capabilities statement indicating the ability to perform all aspects of the effort. Additionally, the Government asked vendors to answer several questions pertaining to the programmatic, technical, and logistical workings of the LISA telescope, the available facilities and resources, and the type of procurement along with their capability statements. Five (5) companies responded to the formal RFI/Sources Sought Notice (Reference RFI-NASA-GSFC-LISA-OTA): ARKA Danbury Mission Technologies LLC (ARKA), BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems Inc. (BAE SMS) (former Ball Aerospace), IERUS Technologies, Inc. (IERUS), L3Harris, and Quartus Engineering Incorporated (Quartus). Although the RFI covered the full scope of the LISA flight telescope development, the responses are applicable to the ETU telescope development as well. The results of the market research are summarized below:

ARKA: ARKA is a small business and the Government’s overall assessment indicates they may be a capable prime contractor for the LISA OTA and ETU telescope requirement.

However, ARKA’s capabilities statement focuses heavily on their coating capabilities and not on the telescope production capabilities; ARKA did not indicate that they have the production capability required for the size and scope of LISA. However, even if ARKA could manage the production capability required, ARKA would likely require an additional investment up to or potentially exceeding and approximately three (3) years for technology development to reach the same capability that L3Harris reached during EDU telescope development program. ARKA would need to use this additional time and cost to develop their own technological capability. The additional investment estimate is based on the resources that have already been spent on LISA telescope development to date. The LISA project does not have the resources, budget, or schedule to fund another technology development program. ARKA would not be able to meet the cost and schedule constraints of the ETU telescope development program.

BAE SMS: BAE SMS is a large business and the Government’s overall assessment indicates BAE SMS is a capable prime contractor for the LISA ETU requirement. BAE SMS has participated in many of NASA’s major astrophysics and heliophysics missions, including HST, Compton, Chandra, Spitzer, the JWST, Kepler, and RST. BAE SMS is currently under contract with NASA GSFC for the development of the Frequency Reference System (FRS) for the LISA mission and participated in an architectural study for the LISA STM and EDU telescopes. BAE SMS has experience in mission systems engineering, design, modeling, and simulation for hardware development of precise, optical instruments, and the subsequent integration, test, and launch of successful payloads performing in space. Additionally, like ARKA, BAE would require up to and three years of development work to achieve the technical level required to even begin work on an ETU. Accordingly, the Government has determined that BAE is unable to meet the requirements without incurring substantial duplicative costs, including development costs, and would face unacceptable delay.

IERUS: IERUS is a small business and the Government’s overall assessment indicates they are not a capable prime contractor for the LISA OTA and ETU requirement. While the company has built and tested optical systems for military applications, they do not have experience in the type of optical systems required for LISA and demonstrated an overall lack of understanding of the requirements.

L3Harris: L3Harris is a large business and the Government’s overall assessment indicates they are a capable prime contractor for the LISA OTA and ETU requirement. L3Harris has a long history spanning over 60+ years of delivering aerospace and defense technology solutions with over 200 missions with L3Harris optical components and payloads currently in orbit. L3Harris has participated in many of NASA’s major missions, including Mercury, Apollo, Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Chandra, Hubble Space Telescope, JWST, Orion, and RST. As discussed above, L3Harris served as the prime contractor for the LISA Telescope EDU contract and participated in an architectural study for the LISA OTA.

They produced an engineering unit telescope with excellent optical performance under the LISA Telescope EDU contract. They have the facilities and experience to produce the ETU telescope for the LISA mission within the project budget and schedule.

Quartus: Quartus is a small business with experience primarily in a supporting role, such as the JWST loads analysis, and not as a prime contractor producing high production rate spaceflight hardware with very challenging requirements. The Government’s overall assessment indicates they are not a capable prime contractor for the LISA OTA and ETU requirement, and do not have a complete understanding of what is required to execute the LISA flight telescope program on schedule.

Results of the market research indicate the LISA ETU procurement cannot be met by commercial items, commercial items with modifications, or non-developmental items.

Results of the market research indicated L3Harris is the only responsible source capable of producing the ETU telescope meeting LISA’s very challenging performance requirements.

The use of any other source for the continued development and production of the LISA telescope would very likely result in substantial duplication of cost that the Government would not recover through competition and unacceptable delays in fulfilling NASA and ESA’s requirements for the LISA mission.

9. FAR 6.303-2(b)(9) – Any other facts supporting the use of other than full and open competition:

None.

10. FAR 6.303-2(b)(10) – A listing of the sources, if any, that expressed an interest in writing in the acquisition:

A notice of NASA’s intent to award this sole-source action was synopsized on the GPE website (Sam.gov) per FAR Subpart 5.2 (See Section 6 above). The synopsis notified all interested sources that this requirement will be issued on a sole-source basis and provided them opportunity to submit their interest and capabilities to the Contracting Officer within 15 days of the synopsis. The synopsis was posted on May 6, 2025 and closed on May 21, 2025 without any responses.

11. FAR 6.303-2(b)(11) – A statement of actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services required:

The Agency will continue to examine the market in the future for alternative solutions or new sources before executing any subsequent acquisitions for the same requirements.