WASHINGTON – U.S. Navy researchers are looking for a contractor to develop, support, and operate application and development software at the Naval Research Laboratory's Blossom Point Tracking Facility in Welcome, Md.
Officials of the Mission Operations Branch of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Spacecraft Engineering Division in Washington issued a solicitation (N00173-26-R-0001) on Wednesday for the Research and Development for Satellite Software and Operations Support project.
NRL maintains the Neptune Software for automated satellite command and control and ground equipment control and status; the Virtual Mission Operations Center (VMOC) for satellite mission management; the Transmit/Receive Enterprise (TREx) Service; and Antenna-as-a-Service software at Blossom Point.
NRL wants industry to develop, support, and operate Neptune software, VMOC software, Blossom Point Antenna Services, and other mission software at Blossom Point -- including infrastructure and cyber security.
DevSecOps and cyber security
The work includes development/security/operations (DevSecOps) processes, operations, and cyber security. Blossom Point antenna center services provide transmit/receive capabilities.
Work includes building and operating a process to deliver new software features and capabilities continuously; continuous operation, monitoring, and usage tracking of satellite ground systems.
Neptune government-owned software tools provide reusable components for command, control, and monitoring of spacecraft and ground equipment at Blossom Point, and is developed mostly in the C, C++, Golang, and Python languages to run on the Linux operating system.
VMOC software provides reusable components for satellite mission management such as collection requirement management, planning services, satellite and contact scheduling, space and ground network management, and real-time operations.
Satellite ground software
The software integrates with satellite ground architectures through the GMSEC software bus or standard REST web services. The GMSEC software bus is a core component of the Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center architecture, developed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for scalable, interoperable, and automated mission operations for spacecraft ground systems.
The GMSEC bus acts as a middleware-based information software bus to enable software components like telemetry processors, automation tools, and monitoring applications to communicate using standardized message formats.
REST web services follow the Representational State Transfer architectural style for building web application programming interfaces that enable different software to communicate over the web using standard HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.
Containerized architecture
VMOC software executes in a containerized architecture like Kubernetes, and is distributed and controlled by NRL since its inception nearly 20 years ago.
Companies interested should submit proposals no later than 19 Nov. 2025 via the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Secure Access File Exchange (SAFE), the web-based secure file transfer service. To do this, companies should email Contract Specialist Candice Tawiah at [email protected] two to three days before submitting to obtain a DoD SAFE drop-off request.
Email questions or concerns to Candice Tawiah at [email protected], or Callan Walsh at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/48f10f545b284faf8328a80d52d105fd/view.
