OSC Seeks Consolidated Pathfinder Contract Proposals for SSA Data Monitoring

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Space Commerce has announced that it is placing in the Global Data Marketplace a new commercial space situational awareness data supply contract under its  Consolidated Pathfinder partnership project with NASA. Launched in January, the project requires SSA data monitoring services to support the OSC’s Traffic Coordinator System for Space. 

The agency explained that the selected contractor will evaluate the orbital data from the project’s three partner companies, in terms of their accuracy, consistency and quality. The project’s three partner companies are COMSPOC, LeoLabs and Slingshot Aerospace. The contract proposals’ submission deadline is Feb. 27, the NOAA Office of Space Commerce said Thursday.

The OSC also pointed out that the selected SSA data quality monitoring service provider will be disqualified from bidding in the agency’s future SSA tasks, due to the potential competitive advantage drawn from the data evaluation work.  

The Consolidated Pathfinder project’s focus is the low-Earth orbit domain and is designed to support the OSC’s TraCSS buildout of a cloud- based information technology system. It will be the backbone of OSC space traffic coordination services to commercial and civil space companies for spaceflight safety, sustainability and global coordination.

The OSC initiated another recent space safety effort in a cooperative research and development agreement with SpaceX, wherein the agency will conduct an astrodynamic evaluation of SpaceX’s satellite management software.