NASA has awarded a key contract to Boeing the International Space Station’s prime contractor, to continue providing key engineering support services, resources and personnel to the program through Sept. 30, 2020. The contract, valued at $1.18 billion, extends for five-years.
NASA and its 16 international partners are analyzing the ability to sustain station operations through 2020. Boeing’s contract includes a task to assess the feasibility of extending the life of the station’s primary structural hardware even further, through the end of 2028. ISS has been continually occupied since Nov. 2, 2000.
“This is a continuation of the successful relationship with NASA and 16 partner nations in maintaining the health of the station,” said John Elbon, vice president and general manager, Boeing Space Exploration. “In addition, it builds on Boeing’s tradition of innovation and technological advancement to incorporate efficiencies and improve performance to the station as its importance to the future of human spaceflight continues to grow.”
The extension includes end-to-end subsystem management for the majority of station systems and allows Boeing to continue providing the program with hardware and software sustaining engineering, among other tasks. The work will be performed at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston; John F. Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Fla. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., and other domestic and international locations.
A unit of The Boeing Company, Defense, Space & Security is one of the world’s largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. Headquartered in St. Louis, Defense, Space & Security is a $31 billion business with 53,000 employees worldwide.