SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH 

SUPPORT SERVICES (STARSS II)

CONTRACT NNL11AA00B

(Contract and SOW)

The below information has been determined to be exempt from 

disclosure under FOIA Exemption b(4) and has been deleted from the 

contract.

 In Section B.5 (Award Fee Availability Schedule), the award fee 

amount located under (b).

Exemption 4 of the FOIA protects "trade secrets and commercial or 

financial information obtained from a person that is privileged or 

confidential. This exemption is intended to protect the interests of both 

the government and submitters of information.

It has been held that commercial material is "confidential" for purposes 

of this exemption if its disclosure would be likely to have either of the 

following effects: (1) impair the Government's ability to obtain 

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(D.C. Cir. 1974).
















































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Section C. STATEMENT OF WORK

Science, Technology and Research Support Services (STARSS II)

1. 0 Purpose

This Statement of Work (SOW) defines the science, technology and research support 

requirements of NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC). These requirements include, 

but are not limited to, support in Earth and planetary atmospheric science, research and 

technology, and Atmospheric Sciences Data Center (ASDC).

2.0 General Scope

The Contractor shall furnish all personnel, facilities, administrative services, equipment, 

supplies, and materials, not provided by the Government, necessary to support the NASA 

Langley Research Center science programs and related engineering activities. Work 

requirements encompass the broad scope of the missions and responsibilities of the 

Langley Research Center's science, technology, research and related applications 

programs. All work assignments will be made by the issuance of Task Orders (TOs). 

Work will be performed in compliance with Federal, Agency, and LaRC specific 

policies, procedures, and regulations, including NASA Procedural Requirements (NPRs) 

as specified in the contract documents. Specifically, Information Technology Security 

(ITS) activities shall comply with NPR 2810.1, "Security of Information Technology” 

and appropriate Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) located on the NASA 

Online Directives Information System (NODIS) Library at 

http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/main_lib.html. The general categories of work to be 

performed are outlined below.

2.1 Responsiveness

The Contractor shall be responsive to face-to-face meeting requests. The government will 

require the contractor to participate in scheduled and emergency face-to-face meetings to 

address a wide variety of task related issues. 

3.0 Science Support Requirements

The Contractor shall provide scientific, analysis, and modeling support necessary to 

conduct atmospheric science research. The Contractor shall also provide administrative, 

consulting, outreach, and applications support to the NASA Langley Research Center's 

science program. The Contractor shall provide support for scientific publications

including conference papers, presentations, and journal articles.

3.1 Algorithm Development, Implementation and Maintenance 

The Contractor shall develop, implement, improve and maintain inversion algorithms for 

retrievals of atmospheric properties based on observations by space, aircraft, in situ and 

surface-based instruments. Current projects of this nature include CERES, CALIPSO and 

lidar systems such as HSRL. During the lifetime of this contract, potential future projects 

include SAGE III, CLARREO and ASCENDS. Support for associated tasks is also 
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required including developing and maintaining “forward” models and diagnostic software

for use by the Government for algorithm validation. Other required support includes the 

development and use of advanced data analysis methods and database development and 

management. 

The Contractor shall provide operational processing code for implementing these 

algorithms following software engineering standards. This comprises the entire end-toend development process including software planning, development, implementation, 

checkout, validation, configuration management, and documentation for processing and 

analyzing data from various missions and instruments. The Contractor shall prepare, 

operate, improve, and maintain the science computing facilities for algorithm 

development, implementation, and maintenance including hardware and software. The 

Contractor shall also provide support for processing data products as required. 

Documentation may include data products catalogs, interface requirements, data 

management plans, ancillary input data, quality assessment plans, coding guidelines, 

software design documents, validation documents, test plans, operator's manuals, and 

other documentation as needed to satisfy project/program requirements. 

3.2 Interpretation, Analysis, Validation, and Models

The Contractor shall analyze and interpret data from satellite, aircraft, in situ and groundbased instruments to enhance scientific understanding and for the validation of 

algorithms and Earth and planetary atmospheric models. This may require 

combining/comparing data sets in diverse formats and/or deriving geophysical quantities 

or relationships from the basic data. The Contractor shall support LaRC numerical 

modeling efforts that encompass regional air quality, chemical weather and other 

atmospheric applications. This includes developing new models, incorporating changes 

into existing models, and changes that maintain compatibility with Langley computer 

resources and operating systems. The Contractor shall develop and/or modify diagnostic 

algorithms for support analysis of numerical models for validation use by the 

Government. Documentation requirements include software development and user 

information, graphical displays of data and support for scientific publications including 

conference papers, presentations, and journal articles.

3.3 Field Missions 

The Contractor shall provide logistical support and ground facilities to personnel and 

equipment while conducting remote field experiments. Documentation shall be required 

to track equipment and supplies, instrument set up and calibration, field operations, data 

acquisition, data processing, and archival. The Contractor shall make arrangements for 

transportation, communications (both voice and data), laboratory space, utilities, and 

housing to support field operations. This may involve setting up experiment infrastructure 

at remote sites around the world. The Contractor shall also provide arrangements for 

travel, lodging, and emergency medical evacuation services for non-NASA participants. 

This includes providing support for set-up and sustained operation of both long-term 

measurements such as the Chesapeake Lighthouse and Aircraft Measurements for 

Satellites (CLAMS) site and short-term measurements such as the Atmospheric Radiation 
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Measurements (ARM) sites both of which are focused on atmospheric radiation, cloud, 

aerosol, surface, and chemistry measurements for the validation of satellite data.

3.3.1 The Contractor shall assist in the development, maintenance, and operation of 

airborne (including balloons) and surface-based data acquisition systems for real-time 

recording and distribution of data, including verification and monitoring of instrument 

performance, in support of field missions. This includes providing instrument/data logger 

interface software, maintenance, experiment operations, data reduction, data 

visualization, and data base archive support for aircraft and/or field correlative 

measurement activities. This also includes data, graphics, website development and other 

inputs for documenting technical analyses and scientific studies. 

3.3.2 The Contractor shall provide assistance in preparing travel plans/orders (both 

foreign and domestic) for employees using appropriate NASA electronic systems and 

coordinate as required by appropriate protocol (documentation and communication) to 

NASA offices associated with approving/regulating visitors, to ensure a seamless science 

mission support service for the Science Directorate. The Contractor shall provide 

scheduling support for various science projects and program support to include 

established baseline schedules and adjustments as needed to present accurate reportable 

timelines to management. The contractor shall provide equipment management support 

for all Science Directorate equipment and update the database as required. 

3.4 Meeting Support

The Contractor shall provide administrative and logistical support to organize and 

conduct science team meetings, working group meetings, technical interchange meetings, 

workshops, and conferences related to activities covered by this Statement of Work. The 

Contractor shall be responsible for making arrangements for facilities, equipment, audio, 

visual, graphics, documentation, interpreters/translators, and other support that may be 

required. This may also include the development and maintenance of websites, databases, 

and graphical support. The Contractor shall provide arrangements for travel and lodging 

for non-NASA participants.

3.5 Space Mission/Payload/Instrument Operations

The Contractor shall provide mission/payload/instrument operations support to current 

and future LaRC missions including: pre- and post-launch activities such as planning, 

integration, calibration, testing and analysis; monitoring of ground and in-orbit 

payload/instrument data downlink/uplink performance; screening raw telemetry data; 

troubleshooting; and managing required ancillary data sets, command loading and 

checkout, and instrument flight software. Documentation of these activities shall include, 

but is not limited to, operations plans, data reduction procedures, test procedures, data 

formats, processing instructions, and user data requirements.
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4.0 Atmospheric Science Data Center and Science Computing Systems Support 

Requirements

The Contractor shall provide all support services necessary to maintain and enhance the 

Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) to meet the needs of the data center's wide 

spectrum of customers based on the Government’s requirements. The Contractor shall 

provide documentation to provide insight into processing, archival, and distribution of 

data. The Contractor shall develop and maintain websites or other media to support 

ASDC functions. The contractor shall provide support for the science computing 

environment in the Science Directorate including system administration for servers,

database administration, and other support for specialized science computing systems.

4.1 Customer and Data Services 

The Contractor shall provide Data Provider Support which includes, but is not limited to, 

developing documentation; performing Science Software Integration and Testing; 

providing Data Management/Analysis; inspecting and verifying data integrity; working 

with data provider to develop sample read programs for data products and establishing 

Service Level Agreements. The Contractor shall provide Data User Support which 

includes providing sample read programs for data holdings; providing data products and 

support services; providing broad visibility of data holdings and services, providing 

information about the projects the data center supports; and performing Data 

Management/Analysis. The Contractor shall operate an On-Call Service/Help Desk to 

provide response to Data Provider and Data Customer inquiries and to provide definition 

of available services. The Contractor shall put in place and execute a customer service 

Performance Monitoring Process to quantify Data Center performance and customer 

satisfaction, as it pertains to customers external to the ASDC. The following information 

shall be collected and tracked: Ingest, Processing, Archival, and Distribution Statistics; 

Number of Customers and Demographics; Uses of data products and services; User 

Satisfaction (Meeting Processing and Data Delivery Obligations). The Contractor shall 

develop outreach materials and support a variety of outreach activities to educate 

scientists and the general public about the ASDC. The Contractor shall explore, on an 

ongoing basis, technologies for possible improvement on the information architecture, 

data accessibility, usability, data visualization and cost effectiveness of the development 

and maintenance of ASDC user interfaces and produce reports and recommendations for 

the Government’s considerations. 

4.2 Operations 

The Contractor shall provide support in the areas of Data Production, Data Management, 

and System/Infrastructure Management. Leveraging automation where practical, the Data 

Production and Data Management areas shall be supported as required including potential 

for limited support outside of core business hours. The Data Production support includes 

processing requests; generating Metadata to provide supporting information required for 

the Data Center's search and order systems; providing documentation of procedures and 

background information for the system integration and testing and production processes 

in an on-line document management system accessible by the Government within a 

standard web browser; and performing Quality Assurance. The Data Management 
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support includes obtaining the input data required to support processing; obtaining data 

products for distribution; delivering products to customers; maintaining data holdings; 

maintaining an accurate description of all data products; providing the capability to 

search the inventory of data holdings and request the delivery of data products, providing 

capability to manage logistics of filling orders; developing services (e.g. visualization 

and/or web/grid services that provide general programmatic access to ASDC data): and 

providing documentation of procedures and background information for the data 

management process in an on-line document management system accessible by the 

Government within a standard web browser. The system/infrastructure management 

support includes system administration database administration services, inventory 

control and configuration management. The contractor shall track the use of system 

resources; provide hardware and software maintenance, updates, and upgrades to support 

data center mission; and document procedures and background information for systems 

and infrastructure management in an on-line document management system accessible by 

the Government within a standard web browser. The contractor shall monitor the IT 

systems supporting ASDC activities, including production processing, for availability 

24x7 with issues addressed as soon as practical.

4.3 Systems Engineering 

The contractor shall provide systems engineering support, including systems analysis and 

risk assessment, systems development, prototype development, and the implementation 

of systems and applications from development to operations. The systems analysis and 

risk assessment includes identifying system risks and requirements and performing 

engineering studies and trade-off analysis to support decision-making. The contractor

shall provide and follow a formal systems development process. The prototype 

development support includes identifying areas of opportunities to reduce cost while 

enhancing products and services; researching state-of-the-art technologies; implementing 

the appropriate technologies in a manner that will enhance ASDC services to its 

customers and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of services provided to Center 

science customers; and provide input to the Government for the preparing of proposals

describing such systems and functionality for submittal to funding organizations. 

The contractor shall provide continued system and software engineering for the evolution 

of the ASDC Archive Next Generation (ANGe) archive system. The primary digital 

libraries managed by the ANGe archive system are those from the Clouds and Earth 

Radiant Energy System (CERES) Project and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared 

Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Project. The contractor shall also provide 

system engineering support for the Earth Observing System Data and Information System 

(EOSDIS) Core System (ECS). The primary digital library managed by the ECS is from 

the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro Radiometer (MISR) Project. The contractor shall 

support the Government in efforts to improve the management of the ASDC digital 

libraries including the potential of migrating to a single archive system (ANGe).

The scope of the development and implementation encompasses user interfaces, metadata 

management, data and storage management systems, and the automated management of 

data ingestion, archive, distribution, production, and other additional data processing 

requests from the ASDC data providers and data customers. 
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4.4 SD System Administration Support

The contractor shall provide system administration support to authorized systems and 

peripherals and to users, both onsite and offsite and in field campaign or travel situations, 

consistent with Federal, NASA, Langley Research Center and SD policies and practices. 

The contractor shall perform standard, industry-practice system administration functions 

for assigned systems. System Administrators are responsible for initial configuration, 

installation of user applications and special application packages, installation of all OS 

upgrades and patches, and account management. The contractor shall provide assistance 

to the authorized users of assigned systems, in response to requests by the users, through 

a common help request system. The contractor shall coordinate with other contractors as 

required. The contractor shall provide system administration support and be responsible 

for assigned Lab and Field Equipment 

The contractor shall maintain accurate inventories of hardware, software and network

configurations. The contractor shall perform ITS support for SD interfacing with the 

Center IT Security organization. The contractor shall provide ITS consultation and 

ensure that ITS issues are addressed across all areas in the ASDC. The contractor shall 

identify ITS issues with existing systems and coordinate appropriate responses.

5.0 Instrument Development Requirements

The Contractor shall provide technical support in the development of diverse aspects of 

technologies required to build space, aircraft, and in situ instruments to meet future Earth 

and planetary atmospheric research needs and objectives.

5.1 Instrument/Sensor Design 

The Contractor shall provide technical support required to translate research objectives 

and scientific requirements to viable instrument concepts for ground, aircraft, and 

spaceflight atmospheric research applications. The Contractor shall support design in the 

following areas: detector/sensor systems, pointing/control systems, lasers (particularly 

lidar systems), optical design, electronics, microprocessor systems, data acquisition and 

thermal, mechanical, and structural systems. 

5.2 Instrument/Sensor Development 

The Contractor shall provide support for instrument design verification, assembly, 

modification, and testing. Analysis efforts shall include the development of end-to-end 

performance models of instrument systems and the evaluation of platform environmental 

effects on instrument performance and science data quality. The Contractor shall develop 

and maintain documentation associated with hardware development. Types of 

documentation include, but are not restricted to, the following: instrument configuration 

and assembly history; drawings; schematics; parts lists; hardware test data; 

command/control/sequencing procedures; data acquisition and display formats; data 

sampling; aircraft and spacecraft interfaces; instrument status and trend data; component-
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level, subsystem-level, and system-level testing procedures; user guides; and 

recommended operational procedures. 

5.3 Instrument/Sensor Calibration and Testing 

The Contractor shall provide support for calibration, integration (aircraft, space platform, 

ground facility), testing, and qualification of research instruments developed by or for 

LaRC. This may include instrument/sensor characterization, laboratory evaluation, 

instrument trending analyses, analyses of measurement precision/accuracy, parts 

reliability testing and analysis, and troubleshooting instrument-related problems. 

6.0 Communication and Outreach Requirements

The Contractor shall research and write news releases, fact sheets, video scripts, photo 

captions and releases, and articles for media consumption that are related to activities and 

research in the Science Directorate and post approved items on the Science Directorate 

NASA web portal. The Contractor shall research content, write text and oversee 

production of video news releases, video b-roll, photography, animation, graphic 

illustrations, and provide on-site consultation on technical content to support television 

remote live shots. Also, support shall be provided to maintain, update and upgrade web 

pages containing research and public outreach content, and ensure that the pages meet 

Agency criteria for security and design. The Contractor shall work with LaRC Public 

Affairs Office to respond to new media inquiries concerning the Science Directorate, 

assist with arranging interviews with LaRC personnel and provide request media 

products such as fact sheets, news releases, and so forth. The Contractor shall provide 

support which can be part of a high-functioning communications team with specialized 

experience as a multimedia producer and graphic designer with animation experience. 

The Contractor shall provide support to ensure effective and ongoing implementation of 

the Science Directorate’s brand messaging strategy. 

7.0 DEVELOP National Student Program Requirements

The Contractor shall plan and organize national activities to support the NASA Science 

Mission Directorate Applied Sciences DEVELOP program. DEVELOP supports 

students who demonstrate prototype applications of NASA science measurements and 

predictions that address local policy issues to community leaders. The Contractor shall 

plan and organize national activities to include participation in scientific and governing 

agency conferences, lead weekly National Program meetings, and deliver presentations to 

high-level NASA officials. The Contractor shall be responsible for editing and 

proofreading students’ technical papers and abstracts for publication at scientific and 

public policy forums, and ensuring that the NASA DEVELOP Program activities align 

with those of the NASA Applied Sciences Program. The Contractor shall provide 

assistance with activities such as the generation of fiscal year program plans, logistical 

support at solicitation panel reviews, and analysis of benchmark reports from NASAfunded projects. The Contractor shall be responsible for all administrative support 

necessary to administer payroll, travel, and other related program expenses for the student 

researchers in the DEVELOP program.