This is a contract result notice, not an open opportunity. Details from the official award data.

The space communications sector is currently booming with the emergence of low cost, short-turnaround and high production rate satellites, such as CubeSats, small-sats and low earth orbit (LEO) constellations.

Here we explicitly refer to the CubeSat technology although much of what we propose could be applied to all forms of small-satellite platforms.

One significant drawback for CubeSats is that they are not currently applicable for data intensive applications, spanning from commercial telecommunications to remote sensing science missions (Earth observation, solar/terrestrial and astrophysics).

We are seeking a supplier who can provide us with expert knowledge of the thermal and mechanical environment of CubeSats in low Earth polar Sun-synchronous orbits, as well as the listed 3U CubeSat hardware, so that we can incorporate and lab demonstrate (TRL-7) a prototype system for 1 Gbps FSO-based CubeSat-to-CubeSat (C2C) communications.