NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is looking for an industry partner for the Earth Venture-2 (EV-2) mission competition getting under way this summer.

NASA’s Earth Systems Science Pathfinder program is expected to issue by the end of June a formal call for proposals for EV-2, a competitively selected Earth science mission that must be ready to launch by early 2017 and cost no more than $150 million, including instruments, spacecraft, launch vehicle, and mission and science operations.

Goddard put out a call May 13 for an industry partner to help the Greenbelt, Md.-based field center develop its EV-2 proposal for a small, polar-orbiting satellite. Goddard released few details on its EV-2 mission concept, but said the envisioned spacecraft must be capable of accommodating at least one high-power Earth science remote sensing instrument that would weigh roughly 540 kilograms including interface electronics. The spacecraft would also need to be able to store up to one terabyte of instrument data and downlink that amount of data each day.

Proposals for the EV-2 competition are expected to be due by the end of September with a selection decision targeted for March or April 2012, according to NASA documents.

 

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