Request For Information (RFI): Terra, Aqua, and Aura (TAA) Missions

1. Summary NASA is exploring partnerships with external organizations for the operations and data collection of Earth Science satellite missions to enable more impactful exploitation of NASA resources and to advance the commercial remote sensing industry. This RFI specifically seeks information on interest in the Terra, Aqua, and/or Aura (TAA) missions and information on potential innovative partnership arrangements to maintain one or more of these on-orbit missions. Depending on the responses to this RFI, NASA may 1) proceed to have discussions with individual respondents or 2) release an Announcement for Partnership Proposals (AFPP) to compete this opportunity with NASA for a reimbursable (partner pays NASA) and/or a non-reimbursable (no exchange of funds) Space Act Agreement. Any resultant agreement(s) from this RFI or potential future AFPP will define the full roles and responsibilities of NASA and the selected Partner(s). For more information on Space Act Agreements and to see samples of such agreements, please see https://www.nasa.gov/partnerships.html. 2. Background NASA uses the vantage point of space to observe the Earth and continuously improve our scientific understanding of Earth’s environment and interconnected systems. NASA
2 instruments and missions have continually improved the capability, resolution, and frequency of observations leading to advanced knowledge about the Earth and innovative applications.
NASA is specifically exploring partnerships for Terra, Aqua, and/or Aura missions. The partnerships are likely to focus on innovative arrangements for carrying out operations and data-related activities or for sponsoring such work currently paid for by NASA. The purpose of this endeavor is to make efficient use of unique national assets and enable public-private partnerships that benefit from taxpayer investments.
As part of partnerships for one of more of these missions, NASA is interested in the proposed arrangements regarding the mission operations; science data collection, processing, and archiving; calibration efforts; science data availability, latency, and access; ground systems; and other aspects. NASA is open to all proposals and novel ideas for productive arrangements, including full to partial use of existing NASA-conducted activities teams via reimbursable terms. NASA will consider partnerships with a consortium involving multiple interested organizations as well as multiple partnerships for each mission. NASA’s preference is that, to the maximum extent possible, a partnership would continue some to all of the data products and make them broadly and openly available to the research and applications communities, whether through NASA science data archives or otherwise.
3. Missions and Instruments The following missions and instruments are under consideration for this RFI. For the full names of instruments visit Appendix A.
Terra ( https://terra.nasa.gov/ ) Terra was