Spacecraft Engineering, Software, Research and Development Services

The purpose of this notice is to provide notification of posting of the Amendment 0001 to the solicitation.

The purpose of this modification is to provide notification of posting of the solicitation and all attachments.

The Naval Center for Space Technology (NCST), located at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC, is the designated lead laboratory for Navy space programs. NCST has the mission to "preserve and enhance a strong space technology base and provide expert capabilities in the development and acquisition of space systems which support Naval missions." NCST has the primary responsibility to develop space systems, spacecraft payloads, tactical communications, aerospace systems, and to actively pursue emerging technologies in an effort to advance space, tactical, and aerospace system development.

The NCST defines system requirements based on overall mission objectives, develops alternative system architectures, designs and develops systems and subsystems, and implements technologies to achieve optimized operational systems.

Scope: NCST develops spacecraft for numerous DoD, NASA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and other government agency customers. These efforts have resulted in successful satellite operations in low, medium, highly elliptical, and geosynchronous orbits. The ability of the center to rapidly produce cost effective and reliable spacecraft and components is directly related to the experience of the engineering team and the ability to apply and modify development techniques, software procedures, processors, and other hardware components to accomplish new requirements. A vast collection of reusable and application specific software components, test procedures, operating system modifications, and other software has been collected and organized. This collection requires continued new development, enhancement, maintenance, test, and configuration management as required by new programs.

Efforts of the tasks delineated in the Performance Requirements of the SOW will be conducted in coordination with Principal Investigator (PI) led research teams that may include Government scientists and other Contractors. The quality and timeliness of the provider's contribution to the work will be evaluated in terms of its impact on the success of the overall project.

This Statement of Work (SOW) defines the technical and managerial tasks required to design, develop, test, maintain, enhance, and provide configuration control for all software modules related to spacecraft and space component development/test and system operations. This includes:
1) The NeptuneTM Software
2) Ground Station and Mission Operations
3) Spacecraft and Payload Integration and Test
4) Real-time Embedded Software
5) Other software

The solicitation and a detailed statement of work, personnel qualifications and other supporting information including contract data requirements will be posted approximately 15 days from the posting of this notice.

Based on a survey of the market, the government has determined that the services to be acquired do not meet the definition of a commercial item. Therefore, the government does not intend to use the procedures as outlined in FAR Part 12 for this acquisition.

It is anticipated that an Indefinite Delivery - Indefinite Quantity type contract with an ordering period of five years will be awarded as a result of the solicitation.

The current contract, N00173-09-C-6001, was awarded to Space Ground Systems Solutions, Inc. (SGSS).

NRL uses Electronic Commerce (EC) to issue Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and amendments to RFPs. Paper copies of the RFP will not be provided. The actual closing date for proposals will be stated in the solicitation when issued.

This solicitation is a 100% small business set-aside. All responsible sources may submit a bid, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.

Other business opportunities for NRL are available at our website: http://heron.nrl.navy.mil/rfplist.htm.