NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration plan to release a solicitation for the procurement of two Solar Wind Plasma Sensor instruments, or SWiPS, as part of the Space Weather Next Lagrange 1 Series of satellites.
The agencies intend to launch a full and open competition for a cost-plus-fixed-fee hardware contract to design, build, test, launch and maintain two SWiPS instruments that will provide NOAA with solar wind data and coronal mass ejection imagery, according to a presolicitation notice published Monday.
The final request for proposals is expected to be released on Dec. 20, and offers may be due by Feb. 5, 2024.
NOAA and NASA expect to award the contract by July 2024.
The contract could run through January 2034 and covers the integration, testing, calibration, evaluation and support of launch and on-orbit check-out of the SWiPS instruments, maintenance of the instrument ground support equipment, ground processing algorithms and mission operations support at the NOAA satellite operations facility.
The first flight SWiPS unit is expected to be delivered by March 2027 and the second unit by June 2029.
Potential offerers should inform the agencies of their intent to bid and should electronically submit contractual and technical questions by Dec. 5.
