RFI FY25 SHEPARD v1 (003).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 Scalable High Energy oPtics for Astronomy Discovery and Returns (SHEPARD) in response to an Early Career Initiative (ECI) sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and released on November 13, 2024. The deadline for partnering responses is January 29, 2025.

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, respond 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 with total costs up to $1.0M per year including procurement and labor costs.

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. Potential partners may respond to all or in part of the technical challenges provided below:

• Astrophysics applications continuously push the limits of sensor and optics technologies due to their demanding requirements. Highly energetic astrophysical phenomena such as supernovae, black holes, and neutron star mergers cannot be understood with visible/infrared observations (ex. JWST) alone and require X-ray observations. The highest resolution X-ray images of these phenomena are produced today using cylindrical grazing-incidence mirrors on space telescopes (e.g., Chandra). Chandra’s mirrors use a Wolter-1 geometry, which allows the high energy X-rays to “graze” internally off two slightly angled surfaces and focus to a point. The groundbreaking science achieved with Chandra since its launch in 1999 has highlighted the need for X-ray mirrors with arcsecond-level or better angular resolution, but with significantly increased effective area over that of Chandra’s mirrors while being cost-effective. NASA’s envisioned future for observation systems includes modular thermally and structurally stable telescopes for maximized science returns for cost. Future X-ray observatories will require stable, cost-effective mirrors with increased sensitivity and imaging resolution to meet observation goals, which are not met by the current state of the art methods for producing X-ray mirrors.

• Scalable High Energy oPtics for Astronomy Returns and Discovery (SHEPARD) investigates the capability of flow form manufacturing to close the gap for affordable, resilient, large collecting area, high-precision X-ray mirrors. Flow forming creates rotationally symmetric forms by using rollers to plastically deform a metallic preform over a mandrel while the mandrel spins around its azimuthal axis. Flow forming is typically performed at ambient temperatures and increases the strength of the material through cold working. The interior profile and surface roughness of the formed part reflect that of the mandrel against which it is formed. The wall thickness of the formed part is controlled by the programmable rollers. Flow-form manufacturing has highly customizable control parameters. The programmable nature of flow-form manufacturing makes it an ideal candidate for gathering data for a process digital twin architecture because specific process steps and parameters can be traced to specific measurements and outcomes. The process offers additional advantages of being highly repeatable, cost-effective, and requiring a reduced infrastructure footprint compared to other SOA methods. This scalability and manufacturing rate benefits are key factors in enabling larger effective-area optics to be manufactured quickly and affordably. Of note, flow forming has not yet been pushed to the high precisions required for grazing incidence mirrors, which require an internal surface finish on the order of nanometers and geometries that do not deviate more than a few hundreds of nanometers from their prescriptions. This project seeks to demonstrate flow-forming as a robust and scalable manufacturing method for the X-ray observatories of tomorrow.

• This project will use a digital twin architecture to derisk the flow forming for making X-ray mirrors. The digital twin architecture will consist of flow-forming experiments coupled with in situ nondestructive evaluation during manufacturing, high resolution metrology and nondestructive evaluation techniques of the formed parts post manufacturing, and process modeling of the flow-forming. Predictions of the formed mirror’s performance structurally, thermally, and optically on orbit will also be executed.

• Partners are sought with expertise and skills and expertise in flow-form manufacturing, advanced manufacturing methodologies, precision machining and polishing of cylindrical metal parts, and ultra-high precision metrology of cylindrical surfaces. Specifically:

o A partner is sought to provide guidance to the SHEPARD team on how to use flow-forming to make precision parts, including guidance on machine alignment, process control, and/or material behavior during flow-forming. Please describe the team’s background and interest in flow-forming precision parts.

o A partner is sought to develop and deliver high-resolution metrology hardware or a metrology system to Langley Research Center that will provide precision measurements of the internal reflecting surface of the cylindrical mirrors and the exterior surface of the cylindrical mandrel. Measurement resolution of 100 nm resolution over a 1 mm spatial scale or better is required. Multiple 1D profiles along the mirror and mandrel azimuths are sufficient to characterize the mirror’s performance, but 2D and 3D measurements are also of interest. A small form factor for the measuring device is required to perform accurate measurements of the reflecting surface (the interior of the cylindrical form) of the mirrors. A partner candidate who provides hardware shall also provide guidance and training to the metrology instrument’s users at Langley Research Center, to ensure that measurements are obtained to the expected specifications. Please specify the approach, precision, and accuracy of the dimensional measurements that can be achieved.

o A partner is sought to provide precision surface machining and finishing on the exterior surface of one mandrel from which the mirrors will be replicated. The mandrel will be approximately 600 mm in length and 300 mm in diameter. The desired surface roughness average (Ra) is 10 nm room mean square (RMS) or better across the entire external forming surface of the mandrel. Ra of 100 nm may be acceptable for our specific workflow. Please specify the approach, precision, and accuracy of the surface finish that can be achieved.

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 (40 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 (30 points): This criterion evaluates the effectiveness of the management 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 (30 points): This criterion evaluates the integration of capabilities across the core team members relative to the work plan.

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). 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 Sam Johnson at samantha.a.johnson@nasa.gov no later than 6 pm Eastern Daylight Time January 29, 2025, 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:samantha.a.johnson@nasa.gov