This partnering synopsis solicits potential partners to participate in a proposal development activity that addresses the technical objectives, development, and demonstration of AEROFUSION-MLUQ (Mars Lander Aerodynamic Data Fusion using Machine Learning with embedded Uncertainty Quantification) in response to an Early Career Initiative (ECI) sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and released on March 24, 2020. The deadline for proposals is May 28, 2020. The Early Career Initiative is an internal NASA call for space technology development and demonstration proposals that foster the next step in the professional development of early career NASA technologists by providing cutting-edge hands-on space technology hardware development opportunities. This initiative promotes creative joint partnering within highly collaborative work environments between the best and brightest NASA early career innovators and while teaming with world-class industry, academia, and other government organizations. Proposing teams will include a core team consisting of a no more than eight members total, including NASA and external partner members at least half of which must consist of NASA early career employees. A NASA early career employee must lead the project (Project Lead) and shall engage an experienced NASA mentor, and a STMD mentor who will be identified after selection of the project. Other roles (e.g., Project Manager, Project Scientist) can be filled by team members from NASA or partner. The general approach will be to employ agile systems engineering methods emphasizing working products, collaboration, iterative, hands-on testing, and responsiveness to change rather than formal process and documentation with milestone-based assessments including a continuation review at the development site and a final presentation to NASA Headquarters. If a project wishes to involve a foreign organization, prior confirmation is needed. Teams must propose innovative space hardware-focused projects lasting no more than two years and costing up to $1.25M in procurement and labor per year. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is seeking partners to participate in developing proposals for and collaborating on potential Early Career Initiative (ECI) projects. LaRC is pursuing several topic areas that align with NASA’s space technology priorities and involve a variety of technical areas that could benefit from partnering. The partner can propose to the technical challenge provided below: Modern aerodynamic models are developed by fusing varying fidelity wind tunnel test (WTT) data and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data. Within each physical test or computer simulation, there are many sources of uncertainty, typically classified as either modeling or numerical errors. To compound the problem, these tests are often run during different developmental phases in a program’s life cycle, which equates to differences in outer-mode-line (OML) characteristics. Not only are the uncertainties difficult to propagate during the testing phase, but they are degraded even further in most current fusion processes. To compensate for the lack of rigorous propagation of uncertainties, the aerodynamic dispersion models include allowances for historic error multipliers or chief engineer “judgement” factors. Moderate efforts have been made to apply some of the machine learning (ML) and uncertainty quantification (UQ) advances to aerodynamic modeling, but to date the connection between data fusion machine learning algorithms and their associated uncertainty propagation has been disjoint throughout the industry. The AEROFUSION-MLUQ team aims to leverage the advances in data science to develop aerodynamic-model-specific algorithms and processes for rigorous propagation of uncertainties during both CFD and WTTs and the data fusion step, with an emphasis on surrogate modeling with embedded UQ to reduce dependency on high-fidelity data. While this research can be applied to most aerospace vehicles, Mars Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) vehicles are particularly relevant to NASA’s Moon to Mars mission and require aerodynamic model uncertainty-dependent trajectory estimation, precision landing and robust control. Ideal academic partners shall have state-of-the-art expertise in one or more of the following areas: ML and surrogate modeling for data fusion, UQ, or flow field characterization with CFD and uncertainty propagation. These capabilities will enable the partner to collaborate with the NASA team to assess the current practices inside and outside of the aerospace industry and to develop algorithms and methods to rigorously propagate uncertainties from start to finish in the aerodynamic modeling process. Partners with ML and UQ expertise will focus the collaboration on conditioning data and exploring ML methods that have embedded UQ capabilities. Partners with UQ and CFD expertise would collaborate on uncertainty propagation methods for CFD and WTTs. Partners shall show relevant experience in maturing low TRL technology. The ideal partner may also identify in-kind contribution, work or resources, which should be described in the partner’s proposal submission (i.e., labor or high performance computing capabilities). The partner shall provide expertise in at least one of the fields described above and must have the personnel and facilities required to perform any necessary software or hardware testing. This partnering opportunity does not guarantee selection for award of any contracts or other agreements, nor is it to be construed as a commitment by NASA to pay for the information solicited. It is expected that the partner(s) selected would provide (at no cost to NASA) technical requirements, conceptual designs, technical data, proposal input, project schedules, and cost estimates. If the proposal is subsequently selected, NASA LaRC anticipates issuing contracts or other agreements to the selected partner(s) for the performance of the proposed tasks. Partner selections will be made by LaRC based on the listed criteria: 1) Technology Description and Approach: This criterion evaluates the technical expertise/capabilities and innovativeness of the external partner in leading and/or executing activities related to the topics above and indicate the resources (skills and time) that would be allocated to the potential proposal development phase. The proposal will also be evaluated on the degree to which the work plan is likely to advance technology and lead to its eventual utilization. 2) Management Approach: This criterion evaluates the overall management approach for the execution of the technical effort. The proposal will be evaluated on the degree to which the management approach is different from standard NASA practices and represents a successful approach from another industry or organization. It will also evaluate how the management approach increases the probability of successfully executing the work plan. 3) Teaming and Workforce Approach: This criterion evaluates the integration of capabilities across the core team members relative to the work plan. 4) Agile Approaches Used in the Past: This criterion evaluates the external partner’s past experience in developing and utilizing agile development principles: using development methods that emphasize working products, collaboration, iterative, hands-on testing, and responsiveness to change rather than formal processes and documentation. Participation in this partnering synopsis is open to all categories of U.S. and non-U.S. organizations, including educational institutions, industry, not-for-profit institutions, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as NASA Centers and other U.S. Government Agencies. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Other Minority Universities (OMUs), small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs), veteran-owned small businesses, service disabled veteran-owned small businesses, HUBZone small businesses, and women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) are encouraged to apply. Participation by non-U.S. organizations is welcome but subject to NASA’s policy of no exchange of funds, in which each government supports its own national participants and associated costs. RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS: Responses to this partnering synopsis shall be limited to 5 pages in not less than 12-point font for each technical area of interest (i.e. offerors responding to one or more of the mission elements may submit up to 5 pages per each element). Responses shall address each of the evaluation criteria listed below. Resumes of key personnel and a cover page that clearly identifies the topic area addressed by the response do not count against the total allocated page count. All responses shall be submitted to LaRC electronically via e-mail by 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time May 28, 2020, to Octavia Hicks at
[email protected] and to Mary Stringer at
[email protected]. All procurement questions should be directed to Octavia Hicks.