CIS Capability Studies IV: Lunar Trunkline Communication Architectures and Mars End-to-End Communication Service Architectures (NextSTEP-3: Appendix C)

Questions and Responses (8/26/2025): Second set of questions and responses provided.

Industry Day Slides (8/18/2025): Industry Day Slides from August 13, 2025 added. No other updates to the solicitation.

Amendment 2 (8/05/2025): The purpose of this amendment is to update the following: Enclosure A: (1) Extend the proposal due date and time to September 17, 2025 5:00pm Eastern Time; (2) Extend the Notice of Intent (NOI) to propose to September 3, 2025; (3) Update the initial source selection anticipated to December 1, 2025; (4) Increase the Funding Allocation to $1.7M; and (5) Update the Proposal Validity Period to 4 months.

Note: An Industry Day Notice is also provided with this amendment. To facilitate open communication with industry, NASA plans to conduct a Virtual Industry Day on August 13, 2025 for the CIS Capability Studies IV: Lunar Trunkline Communication Architectures and Mars End-to-End Communication Service Architectures (NextSTEP-3: Appendix C) acquisition. The Industry Day will commence at 1:00 PM EDT via Microsoft Teams. The Industry Day is restricted to three (3) representatives per company. For additional Industry Day details and registration, refer to the attachment "Industry Day Notice - Appendix C".

Amendment 1 (7/22/2025): The purpose of this amendment is to (1) update Enclosure A to extend the proposal due date and time to August 13, 2025, 5:00pm Eastern Time, and (2) update Enclosure A: Update Table 1. Overview of Proposal Sections and Page Limitations to include "3.3 Intellectual Property".

Note: Questions and responses are also provided with this amendment.

Request for Proposal (07/07/2025): NASA GSFC releases this solicitation under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-3 (NextSTEP-3) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to seek industry led capability studies.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) long-term vision is a resilient space communication and navigation infrastructure that enables science, exploration, and economic development around Earth, Moon, and Mars. NASA is presently pursuing the creation of an interoperable architecture composed of a mixture of existing NASA assets and commercial networks and services. The long-term goal is to establish a commercial space marketplace that supports a multitude of reliable, robust, and cost-effective commercial service providers in which NASA is one of many customers. NASA intends to advance on this goal by collaborating with commercial industry on innovative solutions based on relevant NASA use cases involving cislunar and Mars communication needs.

The Commercialization, Innovation, and Synergies (CIS) Office’s fourth Capability Studies BAA is seeking industry insights in the following two (2) topic areas:

1. Lunar Trunkline Communication Architectures

2. Mars End-to-End Communication Service Architectures

Proposals must be submitted electronically in accordance with the instructions detailed in Enclosure A, Appendix C, Sections 11 through 13, no later than August 6, 2025, 5:00pm Eastern Time. Offerors may propose on one or both study areas identified in Appendix C. Proposals will be evaluated in accordance with Section 13 of Appendix C. NASA reserves the right to select one, multiple, or none of the proposals for award in response to this Appendix. Detailed study requirements and additional information on the overall acquisition strategy, including participant eligibility, is contained also in Appendix C.