Request for Information: Virtual Space Biosciences Training Course: STAR (Spaceflight Technologies, Application, and Research) Call for Applications
Contract Overview
Solicitation details, issuing organization, response deadlines, documents, and interested companies for this government contract opportunity.
AI Contract Overview
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Science Mission Directorate is seeking applicants for the seventh virtual cohort of the STAR (Spaceflight Technologies, Application, and Research) training course, designed to build expertise in space biology and the practical execution of spaceflight experiments. This initiative supports NASA’s broader Space Biology program, which investigates how living systems—from biomolecules to ecosystems—respond to the extreme conditions of space, including altered gravity, ionizing radiation, and elevated carbon dioxide. The research aims to advance precision health strategies and space crop development critical for sustaining human life during lunar and Martian missions, while also yielding insights into fundamental biological processes such as growth, repair, and disease resistance that benefit human health on Earth. The program aligns with priorities outlined in the 2023 National Academies Decadal Survey and the May 2026 Decadal Science Road Map, integrating multidisciplinary approaches across model organisms and biological scales to enable long-duration space exploration. Applications are open through July 31, 2026, under solicitation number NNH26ZDA012L, and the virtual training will prepare participants to design, conduct, and analyze experiments destined for spaceflight environments. The course emphasizes hands-on experience in applying spaceflight technologies to biological research, fostering a new generation of scientists capable of addressing the physiological challenges of deep space travel. The program is part of NASA’s commitment to advancing biological and physical sciences in support of its strategic goals for human exploration, as detailed in the 2025-2026 NASA Science Plan and aligned with the agency’s FY 2026 Annual Performance Plan. Participation in this cohort offers training without the constraints of physical location, allowing a diverse and global applicant pool to contribute to NASA’s mission of enabling human thriving beyond Earth.
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Full Description
A. SMD's Space Biology (SB). The SB program falls within the BPS Division of NASA SMD and focuses on research which increases NASA’s understanding of how living systems respond to the unique environments that are encountered during space exploration, including the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) environment and deep space conditions beyond LEO. SB contributes to common goals across NASA for transit to and maintenance of a sustainable presence in lunar and Martian environments.
SB consists of research across a wide spectrum of biological organization (e.g. biomolecules, cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, whole organisms, microbe-host interactions, and ecosystems, etc.) and model systems to probe deeply into underlying mechanisms by which organisms acclimate to stressors encountered during space exploration (e.g., altered gravity, ionizing radiation, low magnetic fields, elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide, etc.). This research pushes us toward BPS goals in Precision Health for predicting, monitoring, and responding to physiological impacts of space environments, and Space Crops for understanding the response of plants and production of food in space. The results of this important work can reveal how biological systems regulate and sustain growth, metabolism, reproduction, and development in space and how they repair damage and protect themselves from infection and disease. Such knowledge provides fundamental insights into biological mechanisms and provides a foundation researchers can build on to enable humans to thrive during deep space exploration.
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In addition, such knowledge has provided, and will continue to provide, benefits to the health and well-being of those on Earth.
The recommendations and guidance contained within the 2023 National Academies Decadal Survey, "Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A
Decadal Survey for 2023-2032" further informs Space Biology’s current and future research priorities and directives, and BPS released the Decadal Science Road Map (Version 2.3) in May 2026. More information about the Space Biology Program can be found at: https://science.nasa.gov/biological-physical/programs/space-biology.
The strategic goals and objectives of SMD are in the documents available at https://science.nasa.gov/about-us/science-strategy/ including "2025-2026 NASA Science Plan: A
Vision for Scientific Excellence." NASA’s FY 2026 Annual Performance Plan and Evaluation Plan (APPEP) at https://www.nasa.gov/ocfo/performance-report/ describes the Agency’s current Performance Goals, including the underlying milestone targets, consistent with the FY 2025 Operating Plan and FY 2026 President’s Budget Request.
B. HSMD’s Human Res