B -- DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT OF FULL-SKY ASTROMETRIC MAPPING EXPLORER

Notice Date

December 26, 2000

Contracting Office

Fleet & Industrial Supply Center, Norfolk Detachment Washington, Washington Navy Yard, 1014 N Street SE, Suite400, Washington DC 20374-5014

ZIP Code

20374-5014

Solicitation Number

N00600-01-Q-0425

Response Due

December 29, 2000

Point of Contact

Any questions, please contact the Contract Specialist Diana Eichfeld Code 02W2.1B at (202)685-1866 or Contracting Officer Linda Goldsmith Code 02W2.1 at (202) 433-4345.

Description

The Fleet and Industrial Supply Center, Norfolk Detachment -- Washington D.C. intends to award a sole source purchase order to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-1596, on behalf of the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO). The purchase order will be for the Full-Sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer (FAME) design and development. The mission is presently in Phase B development which aims to make trade studies in order to refine the mission design. This will entail reviewing the science requirements, the mission requirements and Charged Coupled Device development to help ensure that the FAME Observatory (instrument and spacecraft) will be successful. This is a follow-on order for additional services. The original order was awarded in 1998 to SAO. Award will be made to SAO because the SAO is the only organization that has investigated and published results for achieving microarcsecond accuracy astrometry. The only known technical competence to investigate such accuracies is only at SAO. The FAME project has been designed to operate with solar radiation pressure to drive the precession of the rotational sky. This concept was developed at SAO. Additionally, a critical part of the concept study and design development is the investigation of the error budget for the FAME observations, SAO is the only organization capable of developing values of the error budget based on the models and simulations that they have developed for the microarsecond astrometry. The subject vendor is the only known source capable of meeting this requirement. NOTE: This is not a request for competitive quotes; however, interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to the Navy's requirement prior to Noon, 29 December 2000. Please direct all interest or questions to Diana Eichfeld at (202) 685-1866, fax (202) 433-0038 or Linda Goldsmith at (202) 433-4345.

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20001228/BSOL001.HTM (W-361 SN5096Q8)