A -- NASA RESEARCH ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE LIVING WITH A STAR/SPACE ENVIRONMENT TESTBED PROGRAM

Notice Date

January 17, 2001

Contracting Office

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 214.4, Greenbelt, MD 20771

ZIP Code

20771

E-Mail Address

Thomas Russell (Thomas.S.Russell.1@gsfc.nasa.gov)

Description

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is planning to issue a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) for the Living With a Star/Space Environment Testbed (LWS/SET) Program. The NRA is currently anticipated to be issued in February 2001 and will be preceded by a workshop on January 25th and 26th, 2001 to define the requirements for the NRA. The workshop will be held at GSFC in Building 26, Room 205. The purpose of the Space Environment Testbeds is to investigate the effects of solar variability on technology. The goal is to improve and develop capabilities to mitigate and/or accommodate the effects of solar variability in spacecraft and avionics design and operation. This will be accomplished by: 7 Performing technology validations in space to enable routine operations 7 Characterizing technology performance in space 7 Improving and developing models, guidelines, and databases for reliable spacecraft and avionics design and operations in radiation, spacecraft charging, meteoroid, orbital debris, and thermosphere/ionosphere environments. The NRA will solicit investigations in three topic areas of interest to the LWS/SET Program: 7 Analysis of existing in-flight data (data mining) that measure the effects of environment interactions with spacecraft and avionics components and technology to provide improved or new models, guidelines, or databases to improve avionics design and operations. This can include new analytical studies of existing data sets from either proposing entities or the government. 7 Collateral environments measurements to support flight validations and performance characterization in the space environments. 7 In-flight experiments to characterize or validate emerging technologies as defined by NASA and NASA's partners. This may include experiments intended to fly on the SET experiments carriers and flights of opportunity on other commercial and technology missions. For SET, NASA is seeking SET partners for both experiments and for the development of flight technology testbeds. This is a multi-project program with at least one access to space in each project. A new project will begin every two years. Each project will contain several stand-alone experiments and correlative environments measurements. The experiments and environments measurements solicited by this NRA are expected to be ready for access to space in the late FY 2003/early FY 2004 time frame. The solicitation of proposals for experiments and environment measurements for follow-on testbed projects will occur in follow-on NRAs. Proposals of secondary launch opportunities as components of testbed partnerships are considered on case-by-case basis. Common support hardware and software to support on-orbit experiments for several sub-systems or components will be supplied. NASA will provide launch, on-orbit operation, and data return. Proposers will be expected to provide ground test data, in-space data after reduction, and funding for integration. The first SET access to space is anticipated for late FY 2003/early FY 2004. The NRA will be open to US and non-US proposers. The workshop will be open to US participants only. Non-US proposers or those who cannot attend the workshop can obtain copies of the workshop results on the LWS/SET website. Contact Information: The LWS/SET website at http://radhome.gsfc.nasa.gov/radhome/set/Testbed.html provides workshop information including on-line registration. The LWS website at http://sec.gsfc.nasa.gov/lws_set.htm provides general LWS information and the results of the workshops held in February and August 2000 that established initial customer and technology requirements, respectively. Program officials may be contacted as follows: Janet Barth -- (301) 286-8046, jlbarth@pop700.nasa.gov Ken LaBel -- (301) 286-9936, ken.label@pop700.nasa.gov

Web Link

Click here for the latest information about this notice (http://nais.msfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/EPS/bizops.cgi?gr=D&pin=51#NRA-GSFC-460-01)

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20010119/SPMSC008.HTM (D-017 SN50B0W2)