NASA Asteroid Redirect Mission Umbrella for Partnerships to be Released in September Seeking Hosted Payloads and Investigation Team

The Asteroid Redirect Mission Umbrella for Partnerships (ARM-UP) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) will solicit concept studies for basic and applied research and technology demonstrations, and mission investigations through partnerships with the ARM. The full BAA Solicitation, with two appendices, is expected to be issued in early September.

Through the ARM-UP BAA, NASA intends to seek proposals in research areas including partner-provided investigations through systems or payloads to be hosted on the robotic segment of the ARM; collaboration through the ARM Investigation Team to support definition of additional mission investigations; studies to define mission partnership opportunities toward NASA’s planned crewed mission to the multi-ton asteroid boulder; and opportunities for access and experimentation at the asteroid boulder after the crewed mission. The ARM-UP BAA will remain open until August 2018, with additional opportunities announced as appendices with their own applicable requirements and milestones. 

The first two appendices issued under the omnibus solicitation, “Appendix A: Hosted Payloads on Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission,” and “Appendix B: ARM Investigation Team Phase 1,” will be released at the same time as the umbrella BAA. Synopses of the appendices are available on FedBizOpps at:

Appendix A (NNH16ZCQ002K-HP): Hosted Payloads on Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission

Appendix B (NNH16ZCQ002K-ITP1): ARM Investigation Team Phase 1

Submission information, participant eligibility, additional topic information and specific evaluation criteria for the solicitation will be identified in the BAA and Appendices.

NASA plans to host a virtual industry forum Sept. 14, 2016 to provide more information. Details on the forum will be made available on the ARM and on the NSPIRES web pages for this solicitation.