LISA ETU Telescope signed Redacted

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER (GSFC)

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

(JOFOC)

For LASER INTERFEROMETER SPACE ANTENNA (LISA) ENGINEERING

TEST UNIT (ETU) TELESCOPE

1. Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.303-2(b)(1) – Identification of the agency and the contracting activity, and specific identification of the document as a “Justification for other than full and open competition.”
This document is a justification for other than full and open competition prepared by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).
The procuring agency is NASA, and the contracting activity is NASA GSFC in Greenbelt, MD.
2. FAR 6.303-2(b)(2) – The nature and/or description of the action being approved: This justification provides the rationale for contracting by other than full and open competition to award a sole-source contract to L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as L3Harris) for the design, fabrication, alignment, testing, verification, delivery, and associated post-delivery support services for the LISA ETU telescope. 3. FAR 6.303-2(b)(3) – A description of the supplies or services required, to meet the Agency’s needs (including the estimated value):
As part of its contribution to the European Space Agency (ESA)-led mission, NASA GSFC will deliver to ESA the ETU telescope, flight units, flight spare telescopes, and spare components required for LISA. The telescopes are required to efficiently transfer laser power between optical benches across 2.5 million kilometers in order to transfer enough laser light between spacecraft. The telescopes must simultaneously receive and transmit the laser light without contributing path-length noise to the inter-spacecraft distance determination, with an allocation of ~1 pm/√Hz in the mHz band to each telescope. For the LISA mission, there is one (1) telescope associated with each of the two (2) proof masses on a LISA spacecraft, giving a total of six (6) flight telescopes in the constellation. This specific JOFOC acquisition is for the design, development, fabrication, alignment, testing, verification, and delivery of the LISA ETU telescope only, which will also be the qualification unit and possibly used as a flight spare. The telescope flight unit needs described above will be procured under a separate contract to be solicited later in 2026, since requirements will be better defined with significantly reduced risks once the ETU has been developed and fully qualified.