AFRL/RV Future Flight Experiment Concepts

The space environment is becoming increasingly congested and contested with numerous new players operating satellites on-orbit. In addition, the United States has established a new service, the United States Space Force (USSF), and published the first space capstone document “Space Power”. In that document five core competences were cited, to which the Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate (AFRL/RV) is looking to develop flight experiments to explore new capabilities in these areas. Of particular interest, we are developing flight experiments concepts that will evaluate (a) fully autonomous inspection operations; (b) broadband RF sensing and communications; (c) rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking (RPOD) for on-orbit refueling and upgrade; (d) space domain awareness (SDA) in the orbital regime beyond Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), or XGEO; and (e) cyber secure flight software.

The objective of this request is to gather information regarding existing capabilities for buses, sensor packages, payloads, propulsion systems, processing capabilities, and communication hardware in the areas below that will help us define future mission concepts and objectives and to identify areas and capabilities that will require additional research and engineering. We are looking to understand the current state of hardware capabilities in each of these areas to determine if our objectives can be met with commercial-off-the-shelf hardware. We are also seeking information regarding the estimated cost and delivery schedule required – detailed cost and schedule breakouts are requested and strongly desired so that we can develop executable program baselines. To encourage competition and guide potential future acquisitions, the descriptions below are not all-inclusive, and we encourage each respondent to provide any additional information that you think may be vital to support our efforts in accurately scoping the technological thresholds and objectives, realistic schedule estimations, and budgetary requirements for the capabilities areas in the next section.