Partnering Opportunity for "Aerocapture Design for Ice Giants Missions"

UPDATE MAY 16, 2022: The submission due date has been extended to May 17, 2022 at 4:30p Eastern. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is hereby soliciting information from potential partners to participate in a proposal development activity that addresses the technical objectives, development, and demonstration of a Aerocapture as an Enabling Option for Ice Giants in response to an Early Career Initiative (ECI) sponsored by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and released on March 1, 2022. The deadline for partnering responses is May 11, 2022. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) LaRC is seeking participation with this partnering synopsis from all interested U.S. and non-U.S. organizations, including educational institutions, industry, not-for-profit institutions, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as NASA Centers and other U.S. Government Agencies. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Other Minority Universities (OMUs), small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs), veteran-owned small businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, HUBZone small businesses, and women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) are also encouraged to apply. Additionally, in support of the Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, NASA is also looking to advance equity or remove barriers for members of underserved communities to access procurement opportunities. Underserved Communities include Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality. Participation by non-U.S. organizations is welcome but subject to NASA's policy of no exchange of funds, in which each government supports its own national participants and associated costs. The Early Career Initiative is an internal NASA call for space technology development and demonstration proposals that foster the next step in the professional development of early career NASA technologists by providing cutting-edge hands-on space technology hardware development opportunities. This initiative promotes creative joint partnering within highly collaborative work environments between the best and brightest NASA early career innovators and while teaming with world-class industry, academia, and other government organizations. Proposing teams will include a core team, including NASA and external partner members and at least half of the core team must consist of NASA early career employees. A NASA early career employee must lead the project (Project Lead) and shall engage an experienced NASA mentor, and a STMD mentor who will be identified after selection of the project. Other roles (e.g., Project Manager, Project Scientist) can be filled by team members from NASA or partner. The general approach will be to employ agile systems engineering methods emphasizing working products, collaboration, iterative, hands-on testing, and responsiveness to change rather than formal process and documentation with milestone-based assessments including a continuation review at the development site and a final presentation to NASA Headquarters. If a project wishes to involve a foreign organization, prior confirmation is needed. Teams must propose innovative space hardware-focused projects lasting no more than 2 years and costing up to $1.25M per year in total for all cost including procurement and labor. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is seeking partners to participate in developing proposals for and collaborating on potential Early Career Initiative (ECI) projects. LaRC is pursuing several topic areas that align with NASA's space technology priorities and involve a variety of technical areas that could benefit from partnering. The partner can propose to the technical challenge provided below: The Ice Giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, are high priority science destinations for planetary missions in the next decades. Due to their distance from Earth, traditional fully-propulsive orbit insertion missions have transit times to the planetary bodies nearing 13-15 years and require a large amount of propellant (40-60% propellant mass fraction), leaving less mass for the scientific payload. Aerocapture uses aerodynamic forces generated by flight within a planetary atmosphere to decelerate and achieve orbit insertion. Aerocapture can robustly deliver a spacecraft to Ice Giant orbits, while substantially increasing on-orbit payload mass (more than 40%) and reducing the transit time by 2-5 years (15-30%) relative to fully-propulsive orbit insertion since aerocapture can achieve orbit insertion from very high interplanetary entry velocities. The - Aerocapture Design for Ice Giants Missions is a two-year systems analysis project which will show the maturation of a viable aerocapture mission design for Ice Giants. Key objectives of this proposal are to: (1) demonstrate the feasibility of using existing, flight proven, entry vehicle configurations for aerocapture missions to the Ice Giants; (2) provide an integrated aerocapture design that merges the multiple maturity level and TRL of the various subsystems and conducts a probabilistic risk assessment to quantify actual risk; and (3) showcases the mission enhancing benefits of an aerocapture system for Ice Giant missions. Year one efforts will be towards the development of a closed aerocapture design with the current state-of-the-art of the aerocapture subsystems, while year two will include technological maturation of system designs for alternatives and risk mitigation. Academic and industry partners may provide expertise in aerospace systems design applicable for aerocapture, including mission design, optical and autonomous interplanetary navigation, guidance and control algorithm development, thermal protection system design for planetary entry missions, mechanical and thermal design, and other systems engineering expertise needed for an aerocapture system design. Partners can also provide expertise in guidance and control algorithm development, especially for their applicability for planetary missions. Partners with experience in doing probabilistic risk assessment of aerocapture subsystems and the full system design would also be desired. Academic and industry partners candidates can also provide expertise in development of planetary science missions, which could include mission design, science instrumentation selection and design, and have experience in past planetary mission proposal process. Partners with planetary science mission experience could play the role of subject matter experts and customers who would provide guidance to make the aerocapture system design relevant for infusion to future planetary science missions. The partner must provide expertise in at least one of the fields described above and must have the personnel and facilities required to perform any necessary software or hardware testing. The ideal partner may also contribute some, but not all, work or resources to the project in-kind, which should be described within the partner's proposal submission. This partnering opportunity does not guarantee selection for award of any contracts or other agreements, nor is it to be construed as a commitment by NASA to pay for the information solicited. It is expected that the partner(s) selected would provide (at no cost to NASA) technical requirements, conceptual designs, technical data, proposal input, project schedules, and cost estimates. If the proposal is subsequently selected, NASA LaRC anticipates issuing contracts or other agreements to the selected partner(s) for the performance of the proposed tasks. Partner selections will be made by LaRC based on the listed criteria: Technical Qualifications of the External Partner (30 points): This criterion evaluates the technical expertise/capabilities; and innovativeness of the external partner in leading and/or executing activities related to the topics above; and the resources (skills and time) that would be allocated to the potential proposal development phase. Management Approach (25 points): This criterion evaluates how the management approach is different from standard NASA practices, evaluates whether it represents a successful approach from another industry or organization and shows understanding of the alternative approach. The criterion will also explain how the management approach applies to your project and the degree to which it increases the probability of successfully executing the work plan. Assessment of the practicality and efficiency of the project schedule and requested resources. Teaming and Workforce Approach (25 points): This criterion evaluates the integration of capabilities across the core team members relative to the work plan. Agile Approaches Used in the Past (20 points): This criterion evaluates the external partner's past experience in developing and utilizing agile development principles: using development methods that emphasize working products; collaboration; iterative, hands-on testing; and responsiveness to change rather than formal processes and documentation. No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on SAM.gov. Interested firms are responsible for monitoring this website for the release of any solicitation or synopsis. Interested firms having the required capabilities necessary to meet the above requirement described herein should submit a capability statement of no more than 5 pages indicating the ability to perform all aspects of the effort. The responses should use 12-point font for each technical area of interest (i.e. offerors responding to one or more of the mission elements may submit up to 5 pages per each element). Responses shall also address each of the evaluation criteria listed above. Resumes of key personnel and a cover page that clearly identifies the topic area addressed by the response do not count against the total allocated page count. Please advise if the requirement is considered to be a commercial or commercial-type product. A commercial item is defined in FAR 2.101. All responses shall be submitted electronically via e-mail to JaeSun Riley at jaesun.k.riley@nasa.gov and to Soumyo Dutta at soumyo.dutta@nasa.gov no later than 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time May 11, 2022, All procurement questions shall be directed to JaeSun Riley. This synopsis is for information and planning purposes only and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government nor will the Government pay for information solicited. Respondents will be notified of the results of the evaluation. Respondents deemed fully qualified will be considered in any resultant partnering selections for the requirement.