US Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1325 East West Highway - Station 4301, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910-3283

D -- AUTOMATION IMPROVEMENT OF DOC/NOAA/NESDIS SATELLITE GROUND SYSTEMS OPERATIONS. POC Aileen B. Redding, Contract Specialist, (301) 713-0839. The Department of Commerce (DOC)/National Oceanic and Atmospheric dministration (NOAA)/National Environmental Satellite, Data and nformation Service (NESDIS) is interested in ways to further improve its current satellite ground systems operations, in particular, through automation of additional system functions and procedures for ground system and satellite operations, scheduling, command and control, system health monitoring,instrument operations and data processing functions. NOAA is soliciting information from all offerors of real-time systems hardware and software for potential application to the automation of satellite ground operations centers. NESDIS performs around-the-clock geostationary and polar-orbiting environmental satellite operations for the collection of environmental data that is disseminated worldwide. These data are in the form of visible and infrared surface and cloud images, microwave sounding data, and other data relay systems that are used in a variety of weather prediction and environmental forecast models. NESDIS control center operations are located in Suitland, Maryland with ground stations for satellite uplink commanding and downlink telemetry and data acquisition located at Wallops, Virginia and Fairbanks, Alaska. The ground stations are linked to the control center by wideband and narrowband communications channels to provide reliable, accurate, and timely transfer of collected data. Various computers and operating systems are currently in use, including DEC, VAX and ALPHA with OpenVMS, VME-based UNIX systems and special purpose application software for the ground operations scheduling, and data processing functions. Virtually all systems have real-time processing requirements and already incorporate a significant degree of automation, including ground equipment scheduling, selection, setup, monitoring, and failover. Of particular interest are improvements that will reduce system life-cycle costs, improve operator efficiency, and increase system reliability. Information is being sought for existing products and services that could be applied to satellite groundsystem operations. If you offer products that fit this description, please submit the following information: product information; installed customer base; recommended applications; pricing guide. No development sources are being sought at this time. Further information on the NOAA weather satellite program is available via the Satellite Operations Control Center (SOCC) web page at (http://www.nnic.noaa.gov/SOCC/SOCC_Home.html). The web page at (http://www.ns.noaa.gov/NESDIS/NESDIS_Home.html) contains additional information on other NESDIS programs. You can also respond to this request directly by email to mckenzie@osdacces.nesdis.noaa.gov.(0087)

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