A--SOLAR SAIL FLIGHT VALIDATION EXPERIMENT RFI

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is seeking industry partners to develop a solar sail flight demonstration system, including but not limited to the solar sail and deployment system, the sail and spacecraft attitude control subsystem, the diagnostic instrumentation, and navigation and trajectory tools for the Solar Sail System flight validation experiment in support of the development of a proposal to respond to the Space Technology 9 (ST9) NASA Research Announcement (NRA)(anticipated to be released in October 2003). It is expected that primary selection of the Solar Sail System as one of the technologies under the NRA (and the availability of sufficient funds) would result in a contract to design, build, test and integrate the spacecraft bus with the AXP instrument. MSFC plans to select partners using the following steps: (1) issue the partnership opportunity document which includes a ST9 overview, projected solar sail system specifications, and instructions for response (2) receive presentation packages (3) evaluate all written presentations. All Partnership Opportunity Document respondents should provide written responses, either electronically (preferred) or hard copies no later than 4:30 PM CDT on Thursday, October 2, 2003. Points of Contact are Dr. Mark Whorton at +1 (555) 000-0000 or Cynthia Hollingsworth at +1 (555) 000-0000; both are at NASA/MSFC, Huntsville, AL 35812. POC email addresses are as follows: contact@example.gov and contact@example.gov. The Partnership Opportunity Document does not represent a guarantee of selection for hardware development. MSFC does not currently have a requirement for this subsystem or funds to support its development. When responding to this notice, please refer to the Solar Sail Flight Validation Experiment (SSFVE) Partnering Opportunity Document attached to this solicitation. Please reference this document in all correspondence. This solicitation/synopsis is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, nor will the Government pay for the information solicited. An ombudsman has been appointed. See Internet Note - B. The documents for this partnership opportunity will be in Microsoft Office Suite (Word 6.0, Excel 5.0, or PowerPoint 4.0) format and will reside on a World Wide Web (WWW) server, which may be accessed using a WWW browser application. The WWW address, or URL, of the NASA/MSFC Business Opportunities home page is http://genesis.MSFC.NASA.gov/procure.htm . It is the offerors responsibility to monitor this site for the release of the Partnership Opportunity Document and amendments (if any). Potential offerors will be responsible for downloading their own copy of the Partnership Opportunity Document and amendments, if any. Any referenced notes can be viewed at the above URL. MSFC contracting office address is: NASA/MSFC, Code PS-52A, MSFC, AL 35812.