Inactive

The National Space Policy directs NASA to “lead an innovative and sustainable program of scientific discovery, technology development, and space exploration with commercial and international partners ... The National Space Policy directs NASA to “lead an innovative and sustainable program of scientific discovery, technology development, and space exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.” NASA has defined the Artemis Program consistent with this direction, which utilizes a strong mixture of commercial and civil space capabilities to establish sustainable lunar missions in the late 2020’s. To support human lunar missions, NASA has established the Human Landing System (HLS) Program responsible for lunar lander development, certification, mission execution, and sustainable services. The HLS Program utilizes a public-private partnership model to meet these responsibilities, consistent with National Space Policy direction by continuing to grow partnerships with the commercial space sector to enable safe, reliable, and cost-effective transport of crew and cargo to destinations in low Earth and cislunar orbits, and to the lunar surface. The public-private partnership model enables efficient combinations of innovation and experience from both sectors, resulting in the best solutions for lunar human mission needs. As an effort that precedes future HLS Sustaining mission capability procurements, the primary objective of this NextSTEP-2 BAA Appendix N is to engage with potential commercial partners for concept studies, Sustaining HLS concept of operations (ground and flight) development, and risk reduction activities. This Appendix N BAA is open to all interested commercial partners subject to the domestic source limitations defined in the solicitation. This Appendix is structured to meet the following goals: • Obtaining industry recommendations on NASA’s draft sustaining HLS requirements, reference mission profiles, and NASA standards; • Enabling industry engagement with NASA to further develop sustaining lunar lander concept development through design, trade studies and joint working groups; and • Performing risk mitigation activities to reduce sustainable lunar lander development risks. Detailed requirements for the Appendix N BAA and additional information on the overall HLS acquisition strategy are contained in the Appendix N solicitation. The Point of Contact for technical and programmatic questions on this synopsis is Ms. Jennifer McCaghren, NASA HLS Contracting Officer at HQ-NextSTEP-BAA@mail.nasa.gov. Amendment 1 has been posted on July 20, 2021. Amendment 2 has been posted on July 22, 2021.