Commercial Smallsat Data On Ramp 3

NASA/HQ has a requirement for the onramp phase of the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program.  NASA intends to continually onramp new commercial small-satellite constellation vendors to acquire and validate small satellite constellation data products, determine their value to the research community, and identify data policies for government use of the commercially acquired data products.  

NASA/HQ intends to award sole-source commercial Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs) to acquire the items from four companies that have been identified through market research and can meet NASA’s objectives for Earth science data acquisitions to  Capella Space, ICEYE US Inc. (ICEYE), GeoOptics Inc. (GeoOptics), and GHGSat Inc. (GHGSat) under the authority of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1(a)(2), which states, “When the supplies or services required by the agency are available from only one responsible source, or, for NASA, from only one or a limited number of responsible sources, and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, full and open competition need not be provided for.” Capella Space provides large areal coverage (100 km x 100 km per scene) that is not known to be otherwise available. ICEYE has the unique ability to provide X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) products at a resolution ranging from 1 to 15 kilometers. GeoOptics provides high quality commercial Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) radio occultation data from Community Initiative for Cellular Earth Remote Observation (CICERO) constellation of Earth observing nanosatellites. GHGSat operates a constellation of imaging spectrometers with the aim of detecting and measuring methane at scales resolving individual emission sources on the scale of 25 - 50 m.

The Government intends to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part 12, FAR 13.3 Simplified Acquisition Methods and 13.5 Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items.

Interested organizations may submit their capabilities and qualifications to perform the effort electronically via email to Rhea Frazier, rhea.p.frazier@nasa.gov, no later than 4:00 pm EST on December 8, 2021.  Such capabilities/qualifications will be evaluated solely for the purpose of determining whether or not to conduct this procurement on a competitive basis.  A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed effort on a full and open competition basis, based on responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the Government.

NASA Clause 1852.215-84, Ombudsman, is applicable.  The Center Ombudsman for this acquisition can be found at http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/pub/pub_library/Omb.html .