SDA Updated Nebula Standard

Background
The Space Development Agency (SDA) was established by the Department of Defense (DoD) on March 12, 2019, to define and monitor the future threat-driven space architecture and accelerate the development of military space capabilities.

The NEBULA Standard is critical for ensuring the technological and military advantage in space for national defense, focusing on the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) which aims to provide resilient military sensing and data transport capabilities primarily in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

This document outlines the standards and requirements for the NEBULA network, which facilitates space-to-space and space-to-ground communications.

Work Details
The NEBULA Standard specifies protocols and behaviors for the PWSA's space network service. Key components include:
1. **General Requirements**: All network devices must support unfragmented transfer of black IP packets up to 1500 bytes, be reconfigurable during operation, and support grouped reconfigurations as atomic transactions.
2. **Information Assurance**: Compliance with HAIPE standards for cryptographic devices, use of TLS v1.3 for TCP exchanges, and DTLS v1.2 for UDP exchanges.
3. **Intra-node Ethernet Switches**: Use of Ethernet as per IEEE802.1q without tags or MAC-in-MAC encapsulation.
4. **Inter-node MPLS Switches**: Use of MPLS for communication with support for differentiated services (Diffserv), ECN marking, AQM, and native multicast.
5. **Hosts Requirements**: Support for IPv4 and IPv6 messaging, unique routable IP addresses across the constellation, reconfiguration capabilities during operation, and strict priority queueing based on QoS markings.

Period of Performance
The contract will be performed over multiple tranches starting with Tranche 0 (T0) and continuing through subsequent tranches as capabilities are developed and integrated.

Place of Performance
The work will be conducted primarily in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) as part of the PWSA network.