U.S. Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/OFA/AGFS/AMD -- OFA51, 1305 East West Highway -- Station 7604, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910

D -- GOES SATELLITE DATA ARCHIVE SYSTEM RESCUE SOL 52-DDNE-8-90079 POC Marlene Quade, Contract Specialist, Ina R. Merson, Contracting Officer, 301/713-0839 D -- The Department of Commerce/ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/ National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (DOC/NOAA/NESDIS) intends to award a sole source contract to the University of Wisconsin/ Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC), to rescue NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) Satellite Archive System (GSAS) archive data and transfer it to a supportable medium. A secondary archive will also be provided consisting of a reduced resolution data set freely accessible to the Government and University researchers. In addition, a near real-time on-line data base of current GOES data will be made available on a daily basis. The NOAA GSAS and data holding are currently held at the SSEC, and the current medium (Sony U-Matic cartridges) on which this archive is held, is deteriorating at a rapid pace. The Government has already received a warning from the manufacturer that this medium is unreliable, and will no longer be supported. Thedeteriorating portion of the GSAS archive was collected from 1978 through 1997, and has a total volume of 220 Terabytes. It is estimated that 22,000 tapes will be required for the primary full precision archive. The secondary archive will be established at NCDC in Asheville, NC, using the same IBM card reader/writers. As part of the transfer, the SSEC will also develop a data compression algorithm with will reduce the overall volume of the archive, without destroying the integrity of the data. The secondary archive will be generated concurrently with the primary archive recovery. The data being transferred will not be destroyed and it will be corrected, if necessary, while the transfer is occurring. The University of Wisconsin/ SSEC, under contract with NOAA, currently captures the GOES signal directly from the satellites in an analog format. The hardware and the software required to retrieve these data are unique to the University, developed and implemented by their in-house engineers. This contract will provide for the transfer of data from this unique technology to an off-the-shelf digital tape technology. SSEC has the historical knowledge, the documentation of the calibrations, and the navigation and data record systems, which are proprietary to the SSEC. They also have documented errors and fixes of the unique data recording systems which is only available at the SSEC. The contractor must 1) be able to document and correct navigation and calibration errors for the development of display and retrieval software 2) possess the expertise to copy existing GOES archive U-Matic tapes 3) possess advanced scientific and technical knowledge of GOES satellite formats and hardware technology in which the data are archived; and the historical knowledge of operational satellite systems and data recording systems which shall be used to correct and document problems acquired in the original archive 4) possess the hardware and retrieval software necessary for the rescue operation since government-owned equipment of approximately $1/2 million in value is already in place at the SSEC. The requirement is extremely time critical since the data is already deteriorating. NOAA believes that only SSEC is capable of providing the services necessary in a cost efficient and timely manner, and that hardware and software expertise in handling U-Matic cassettes for the purpose of archiving satellite data is available only at the Space Science and Engineering Center. No solicitation is available. Respondents to this announcement who believe they have the ability to provide the services required must identify their interest and capability and show their capability to provide these services. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals. See Note 22. (0170)

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