Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) Ground Segment Command and Control Element

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded a cost plus fixed-fee contract totaling $43,784,063 to L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (L3Harris) in Melbourne, Florida.  The duration of performance for the Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) Command and Control activities will be five years.  This contract action is to develop, deploy, and provide operations support for the SWFO Ground Segment’s (GS) Command and Control (C2) element of the SWFO-L1 observatory.  The Government will insert the SWFO-L1 observatory at the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1) as an extension of NOAA’s existing Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - R Series (GOES-R) Core Ground System (CGS), using the GOES-R CGS architecture, and integrating with the GOES-R CGS.  The Government anticipates the observatory to be on-orbit by 2025 as a contributed co-manifest rideshare on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) upcoming Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission that is launching in 2024.   

NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), Office of Projects, Planning and Analysis (OPPA) will manage the contract.  L3Harris will be installing equipment at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF) in Suitland, Maryland; NOAA’s Wallops Command and Data Acquisition Station (WCDAS) in Wallops, Virginia; and at NOAA’s Consolidated Backup Facility (CBU) in Fairmont, West Virginia in addition to performing work at the L3Harris’ facility in Melbourne, Florida. The work will allow SWFO-L1 to provide continuity of solar wind data and coronal mass ejection imagery data and information from the Lagrange-1 orbital position that will flow to the National Weather Service’s, Space Weather Prediction Center located in Boulder, Colorado. These data are critical to support monitoring and timely forecast of space weather events that have the potential to adversely impact elements critical to national security and economic prosperity, including telecommunication and navigation, satellite systems, and the power grid.  The Government manages the SWFO program as an integrated NOAA-NASA program wherein NOAA is responsible for overall funding and implementation of the SWFO program, and NASA serves as NOAA’s acquisition agent for the space segment and for launch services.  NOAA is responsible for the ground segment including the acquisition, development, test, and integration of the SWFO C2 element.

This contract action was neither competitive nor fixed-price.  The rationale for using other than a fixed-priced and/or competitive approach, per FAR 5.705(b), is that a cost-reimbursement contract is the most appropriate contract type to balance performance and cost risk between Government and industry and allows negotiation of the best value to the Government for this requirement.  This scenario also mitigates the number of uncertainties involved in contract performance that do not permit costs to be estimated with sufficient accuracy to use any type of fixed-price contract.  NOAA has used cost reimbursement contracts successfully on previous contracts for similar acquisitions because it is unable to predict the duration of the work for the targeted sub-tasks, the particular mixes of skills to be assigned, or the overall magnitude of effort with any degree of certainty.  The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C. 3304 (a)(1) as implemented by FAR Subpart 6.302-1 entitled, “Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements.”

Awarded contract 1332KP21CNEEO0002 to L3HARRIS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. for 43784063.00 on 2021-02-04.