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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| NASA seeks ... |
| 2017-03-03 |
| NASA is soliciting concepts for payloads that could fly on a mysterious satellite it is in discussions to inherit from another government agency. NASA issued a request for information (RFI) Feb. 15 for a proposed spacecraft called the NASA Science/Technology Platform Satellite, or NSTP-Sat. The RFI was the first time NASA had publicly discussed such a mission. The RFI, issued by NASA’s science mission directorate, solicits ideas for payloads, including remote sensing instruments and technology demonstrations, which could fly on the spacecraft. The RFI offered few details about the proposed mission, noting NSTP-Sat could fly "to low earth orbit, geostationary equatorial orbit, medium Earth orbit, Earth-Moon L1, or lunar orbit in the 2021 timeframe." The RFI, which remains open until March 17, seeks ideas for how this spacecraft could be used to meet NASA’s science and technology development goals. The RFI states that NASA will use the responses to determine "whether there are science opportunities for new uses of this spacecraft" and "whether a solicitation for proposals is warranted to enable such opportunities." The RFI offered few details about the spacecraft itself. "The NSTP-Sat is a spacecraft platform that has become available to NASA as excess Government property through an interagency agreement," it stated. It added the spacecraft was a "Boeing GEO spinner bus" that could launch on an EELV-class rocket or as a secondary payload on a Space Launch System mission. NASA and other organizations involved with NSTP-Sat have been reticent to provide additional details about how NASA gained access to the satellite bus. Alan Zide, a program executive in NASA’s heliophysics division and the point of contact listed in the RFI, did not respond to email messages with questions about the satellite. |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #1 Earth-Moon L1 Occupants of L1 are pretty well known from current instrumentation. What about a magnetic field mapping of L4-5? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2017-03-03 18:48 |