J--MAINTENANCE AND MODIFICATIONS TO THE DISTRESS ALERTING SATELLITE SYSTEMGROUND STATION LOCATED AT GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

NASA/GSFC has a requirement for maintenance, modifications, and upgrades to the Distress Alerting Satellite System (DASS) ground station located at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. The DASS is based upon usage of the US Air Force's Global Positioning System constellation series of spacecraft. The ground station receives distress signals relayed by several satellites and computes a location of the distress beacon. Potential tasks include maintenance and modifications to the ground processor station to keep it operating, to enhance capabilities, to increase accuracy of the data products, and to maintain state-of-the-art capability. NASA/GSFC intends to issue a sole source procurement to Techno-Sciences, Inc. (TSi) 11750 Beltsville Drive, Beltsville, MD 20705, for the maintenance, modification, and upgrade to the DASS ground station and management of associated antennas. TSi is the vendor that designed and built the ground processing portion of the DASS prototype ground station, and is the only vendor that has the design information and software source code for this prototype ground station. While NASA has some rights in the vendor supplied station software, those rights do not extend to supplying it to another vendor for the purposes of competition. To have another vendor try to duplicate this station so it could learn to maintain it would be time and cost prohibitive. The Government intends to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part 12. Interested organizations may submit their capabilities and qualifications to perform the effort in writing to the identified point of contact not later than 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard time on June 19, 2015. 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 upon responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the government. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. All responsible sources may submit an offer which shall be considered by the agency. An Ombudsman has been appointed. NASA Clause 1852.215-84, Ombudsman, is applicable. The Center Ombudsman for this acquisition can be found at http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/pub/p ub_library/Omb.html