Partnering Synopsis PolCube RFI v8 final.pdf

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is hereby soliciting information from potential partners to participate in a proposal development activity that addresses the technical objectives, development, and demonstration of a PolCube CubeSat Polarimeter Mission in response to an Early Career Initiative (ECI) sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and released on March 1, 2022. The deadline for partnering responses is April 21, 2022.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) LaRC is seeking participation with this partnering synopsis from all interested U.S. and non-U.S. organizations, including educational institutions, industry, not-for-profit institutions, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as NASA Centers and other U.S. Government Agencies. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Other Minority Universities (OMUs), small-disadvantaged businesses (SDBs), veteran-owned small businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, HUBZone small businesses, and women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) are also encouraged to apply. Additionally, in support of the Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, NASA is also looking to advance equity or remove barriers for members of underserved communities to access procurement opportunities. Underserved Communities include Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color;

members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.

Participation by non-U.S. organizations is welcome but subject to NASA’s policy of no exchange of funds, in which each government supports its own national participants and associated costs.

The Early Career Initiative is an internal NASA call for space technology development and demonstration proposals that foster the next step in the professional development of early career NASA technologists by providing cutting-edge hands-on space technology hardware development opportunities. This initiative promotes creative joint partnering within highly collaborative work environments between the best and brightest NASA early career innovators and while teaming with world-class industry, academia, and other government organizations.

Proposing teams will include a core team, including NASA and external partner members and at least half of the core team must consist of NASA early career employees. A NASA early career employee must lead the project (Project Lead) and shall engage an experienced NASA mentor, and a STMD mentor who will be identified after selection of the project. Other roles (e.g., Project Manager, Project Scientist) can be filled by team members from NASA or partner. The general approach will be to employ agile systems engineering methods emphasizing working products, collaboration, iterative, hands-on testing, and responsiveness to change rather than formal process and documentation with milestone-based assessments including a continuation review at the development site and a final presentation to NASA Headquarters. If a project wishes to involve a foreign organization, prior confirmation is needed.

Teams must propose innovative space hardware-focused projects lasting no more than 2 years and costing up to $1.25M per year in total for all cost including procurement and labor.

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is seeking partners to participate in developing proposals for and collaborating on potential Early Career Initiative (ECI) projects. LaRC is pursuing several topic areas that align with NASA’s space technology priorities and involve a variety of technical areas that could benefit from partnering. The partner can propose to one or more technical challenges provided below:

• PolCube CubeSat polarimeter calibration – The PolCube CubeSat polarimeter is a multi-channel, multi-angle polarimeter instrument that can retrieve aerosol, cloud and surface properties of the Earth’s atmosphere through passive remote sensing. One of the key drivers in the retrieval capabilities of polarimeter instruments is the measurement accuracy of the total radiance and Stokes components (Q, U) and the degree of linear polarization (DOLP), since the uncertainties in these observables directly impact the uncertainties of the derived aerosol and cloud remote sensing products. Partner expertise is needed in laboratory, airborne, or satellite polarimetric measurements to develop a robust and comprehensive instrument performance characterization protocol for the PolCube CubeSat polarimeter instrument and calibration techniques. Hardware or software tools to implement vicarious calibration approaches once in orbit are also relevant.

• CubeSat integration, launch and operations – We seek a partner that has the expertise and experience to integrate a CubeSat payload onto a launch vehicle, including rideshare opportunities, and deploy the CubeSat into a desired sun-synchronous orbit.

The partner is expected to work with the launch provider for an end-to-end integration-to-launch service, in addition to reviewing with NASA engineers throughout the process of integrating, launching and deploying a CubeSat satellite.

We also seek partners to collaborate in the development of communication and data transfer capabilities to ground stations, in addition to operations concepts for dynamic and enhanced targeted observations of aerosols produced by natural disasters such as wildfires and volcanic eruptions, and changes in surface properties produced by deforestation, drought, or harmful algal blooms. The PolCube CubeSat polarimeter has the potential to become a comprehensive solution for aerosol, cloud, and surface properties for future NASA and commercial Earth-observing satellites, and partners interested in developing synergistic capabilities with other Earth-based measurements will receive special consideration.

• Polarimetric remote sensing retrieval algorithms – PolCube will take advantage of a multi-disciplinary team of experts to develop advanced polarimetric remote sensing retrieval algorithms that ensure that NASA can support urgently-needed capabilities to successfully evaluate the impact of climate changes for current and future Earth Science missions. One of the challenges for NASA is to develop accurate and operationally fast polarimetric remote sensing retrieval algorithms for large data volumes and for a wide variety of scenarios including aerosol retrievals above coastal waters, aerosol retrievals above varying land types such as forests, croplands, plains, deserts, and urban areas, and aerosol retrievals below thin cirrus clouds. Retrievals of aerosol and cloud properties above bright surfaces such as snow, ice and snow-covered ice are also of interest. Additional areas of interest include machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches that can be used to implement fast and accurate forward models that include the use of 3D vector radiative transfer calculations or that can track the motion of clouds from multiple viewing-angle measurements at fine spatial resolutions. Algorithm technology gaps also exist in producing accurate polarimetric aerosol and cloud products at speeds that are well beyond operational, to achieve very short latencies, in order to enable improved air quality and weather forecasting capabilities. For example, a significant challenge will be to create the necessary aerosol, cloud, and air quality products with latencies of less than 1 hour after the data is received, and to make the processing and archival of polarimeter data using cloud platforms automated and routine in a way that is cost-effective, flexible, and scalable.

• Ideal academic and government partner candidates shall provide expertise in the fields of laboratory polarimetric measurements, characterization, and calibration;

artificial intelligence and machine learning; atmospheric science and polarimetric remote sensing software development. Any personnel and facilities required to develop and test the software algorithms or hardware procedures using relevant hardware developed among partners. Academic and government partners shall participate in laboratory demonstrations by providing support for demonstration planning, execution, data analysis, and other supporting activities. They may also conduct various proof-of-concept mini demonstrations prior to and in support of project major milestone demonstrations.

• Ideal industry partner candidates will have a past record of successful integration, launch and deployment of CubeSat and/or SmallSat satellite payloads. Industry partners can also act as CubeSat subject matter experts to ensure that current and future PolCube CubeSat instruments are relevant to their projected CubeSat integration and launch scenarios, where end-to-end integration, launch and operational capabilities are needed. Industry partners shall provide relevant hardware for integrating the PolCube CubeSat into the launch vehicle and should have experience in successfully using such hardware to deploy CubeSat and/or SmallSat satellite payloads into a sun-synchronous orbit. Industry partners who are planning to expand services to target and who would benefit from incorporating PolCube CubeSat polarimeter technology into their commercial Earth observations are also potential candidates. Partners that are interested in the capabilities of polarimetric CubeSat measurements of the Mars surface and dust aerosol properties may also be considered.

The partner must provide expertise in at least one of the fields described above and must have the personnel and facilities required to perform any necessary software or hardware testing. The ideal partner may also contribute some, but not all, work or resources to the project in-kind, which should be described within the partner’s proposal submission.

This partnering opportunity does not guarantee selection for award of any contracts or other agreements, nor is it to be construed as a commitment by NASA to pay for the information solicited. It is expected that the partner(s) selected would provide (at no cost to NASA) technical requirements, conceptual designs, technical data, proposal input, project schedules, and cost estimates. If the proposal is subsequently selected, NASA LaRC anticipates issuing contracts or other agreements to the selected partner(s) for the performance of the proposed tasks.

Partner selections will be made by LaRC based on the listed criteria:

(1) Technical Qualifications of the External Partner (30 points): This criterion evaluates the technical expertise/capabilities; and innovativeness of the external partner in leading and/or executing activities related to the topics above; and the resources (skills and time) that would be allocated to the potential proposal development phase.

(2) Management Approach (25 points): This criterion evaluates how the management approach is different from standard NASA practices, evaluates whether it represents a successful approach from another industry or organization and shows understanding of the alternative approach. The criterion will also explain how the management approach applies to your project and the degree to which it increases the probability of successfully executing the work plan. Assessment of the practicality and efficiency of the project schedule and requested resources.

(3) Teaming and Workforce Approach (25 points): This criterion evaluates the integration of capabilities across the core team members relative to the work plan.

(4) Project Management Approaches Used in the Past (20 points): This criterion evaluates the external partner’s past experience in developing and utilizing different development principles (e.g., Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Hybrid): using development methods that emphasize working products; collaboration; iterative, hands-on testing; and responsiveness to change rather than formal processes and documentation.

No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on SAM.gov. Interested firms are responsible for monitoring this website for the release of any solicitation or synopsis.

Interested firms having the required capabilities necessary to meet the above requirement described herein should submit a capability statement of no more than 5 pages indicating the ability to perform all aspects of the effort. The responses should use 12-point font for each technical area of interest (i.e. offerors responding to one or more of the mission elements may submit up to 5 pages per each element). Responses shall also address each of the evaluation criteria listed above. Resumes of key personnel and a cover page that clearly identifies the topic area addressed by the response do not count against the total allocated page count. Please advise if the requirement is considered to be a commercial or commercial-type product. A commercial item is defined in FAR 2.101.

All responses shall be submitted electronically via e-mail to Octavia Hicks at octavia.l.hicks@nasa.gov and to Snorre Stamnes at snorre.a.stamnes@nasa.gov no later than 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time April 21, 2022. All procurement questions should be directed to Octavia Hicks.

This synopsis is for information and planning purposes only and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government nor will the Government pay for information solicited.

Respondents will be notified of the results of the evaluation. Respondents deemed fully qualified will be considered in any resultant partnering selections for the requirement.

mailto:octavia.l.hicks@nasa.gov mailto:octavia.l.hicks@nasa.gov