NASA/Langley Research Center, Mail Stop 144, Industry Assistance Office, Hampton, VA 23681-0001

A -- FLIGHT CRITICAL SYSTEMS RESEARCH SOL 1-063-DIG.1299 DUE 111098 POC Deloris J. Hart, Contract Specialist, Phone (757)-864-2439, Fax (757) 864-7898, Email D.J.HART@larc.nasa.gov WEB: Click here for the latest information about this notice, http://nais.nasa.gov/EPS/LaRC/date.html#1-063-DIG.1299. E-MAIL: Deloris J. Hart, D.J.HART@larc.nasa.gov. NASA/LaRC is hereby soliciting bids for Flight Critical Systems Research. The contract is for research and development to meet specific objectives in five critical areas in support of three NASA enabling technology goals. The goals are (1) to reduce the aircraft accident rate by a factor of five within 10 years, and factor of 10 within 20 years; (2) while maintaining safety, triple the aviation system throughput, in all weather conditions, within 10 years; and (3) provide next-generation design tools and experimental aircraft to increase design confidence, and cut the development cycle time for aircraft in half. The five research and development areas are as follows. 1. Guidance and Control in Adverse Conditions: Develop guidance and control technologies for operation throughout the flight envelope to (1) prevent loss of vehicle control and (2) recover vehicle control from loss-of-control (upset) conditions resulting from adverse flight conditions and vehicle/system failures which can each occur separately or in combinations. 2. Flight Critical Systems Design and Analysis: Develop and demonstrate methods, techniques, and tools for the design, verification, integration, validation, and certification of complex and highly integrated mission and life critical systems. Also, investigate methods for the combined and simultaneous assessment of dependability and performance that quantify the system s ability to perform to specification in the presence of faults; and develop databases from analytical, simulation, and flight investigations of flight critical systems performance in failure/damage situations. Such databases will provide the basis for new system designs and for new assessment techniques and tools. 3. Flight Critical Systems Health Management: Investigate the integration and validation of existing and future sensing/processing technologies to better aid in vehicle-wide health monitoring. Develop concepts, methods, and technologies for distributed, smart systems and onboard diagnostic system architectures. Validate new health monitoring and diagnostic system concepts in the context of catastrophic failure prevention and decreased maintenance costs. Proposed research may encompass malfunctions and failures of the aircraft propulsion system, airframe, and aircraft flight systems. 4. Situation Awareness: Develop technologies and methods that provide real-time information, electronically, to flight crews to improve their situation awareness. Types of real-time information include, but are not limited to, current position in four dimensional space, traffic locations and identity, terrain and obstacle locations, hazardous weather location and type, flight path or surface route information, air traffic control (ATC) instructions, and alerts of impending/potential hazardous situations. Also, develop technologies and methods aimed at increasing the situation awareness of air traffic controllers through, for example, systems to enable both strategic and tactical collaborative decision making, seamless surveillance, controller-pilot datalink communications (CPDLC), and alerting of path/route deviations by flight crews. 5. Systems Engineering and Analysis: Perform systems engineering in support of novel flight critical systems analysis and development from research concept through simulation and test to flight experiment. Specific functions associated with systems engineering include requirements analysis; complex system functional decomposition; experimental system specification; experimental system design; system verification and validation; cost-benefit studies; modeling and simulation; configuration management; systems integration; and systems assurance. NASA/LaRC plans to issue a draft RFP via the internet, on or about 11/30/98. This document is for information and planning purposes and to allow industry the opportunity to verify reasonableness and feasibility of the requirement, as well as promote competition. Prospective offerors are invited to sumbit comments or questions to: NASA Langley Research Center, Industry Assistance Office, Attn: Linda P. Fitzgerald, Mail Stop 144, Hampton, VA 23681-0001 no later than 11/10/98. In responding reference 1-063-DIG 1299. Comments may be forwarded to Deloris J. Hart via electronic transmission or by facsimile transmission. This synopsis is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, nor will the Government pay for the information solicited. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the review. Any questions regarding this announcement should be directed to the identified point of contact. [OMBUDSMAN STATEMENT IS REQUIRED] An ombudsman has been appointed -- See Internet Note "B". The solicitation and any documents related to this procurement will be available over the Internet. These documents will be in Microsoft Office Suite (Word 6.0, Excel 5.0, or PowerPoint 4.0) format and will reside on a World Wide Web (WWW) server, which may be accessed using a WWW browser application. The WWW address, or URL of the NASA/LaRC Business Opportunities home page is http://procurement.nasa.gov/EPS/LaRC/class.html. It is the offerors responsibility to monitor this cite for the release of the solicitation and amendments (if any). Potential offerors will be responsible for downloading their own copy of the solicitation and amendments, if any. Any referenced notes can be viewed at the following URL: http://cbdnet.access.gpo.gov/num-note.html and http://genesis.gsfc.nasa.gov/nasanote.html. Posted 10/26/98 (D-SN265268). (0299)

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