Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Destination (CLD) Concept of Operations

This concept of operations describes:
- High-level Government goals, objectives, and needs for the CLD program, vehicle(s), and
missions,
- Strategies, policies, and processes for developing, certifying, maintaining, using, and retiring CLDs in the context of Government use, and
- Government and CLD partner roles, responsibilities, and interactions during various phases of
Government CLD operations.

The intent of this document is to describe the overall high-level concept of how the end-to-end CLD service will be used to convey the nature and scope of services the Government intends to procure from the CLD partner. It will provide insight into NASA’s concepts for CLD operations rather than to provide mature, explicit, or complete requirements. It addresses how the concept of operations will be used to meet NASA expectations from an operational perspective to facilitate an understanding of the end-to-end CLD service needs, goals, and objectives (NGOs). Formal CLD requirements and standards are detailed in the NASA Commercial LEO Development Program’s (CLDP) various requirements, interface, process, and standards documents, as well as the contractual Statements of Work (SOW) and Data Requirement Deliverables (DRD). As such, the Concept of Operations can use terms such as “should” or “may” or “expects to” since it is not a contractual requirements document. It exists solely to convey the initial nature and type of services the Government intends to procure and is not, per se, a requirements document.