NASA extends Boeing partnership to 2024 with $915 million contract

In this Feb. 12, 1984 photo made available by NASA, astronaut Bruce McCandless uses a nitrogen jet-propelled backpack, a Manned Maneuvering Unit outside the space shuttle Challenger. Astronaut wannabe Rachel Zimmerman-Brachman, a public engagement specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that isolation is a lot like astronaut training. On Thursday, March 19, 2020, she wrote on Facebook, “Attitude is everything: I'm on an adventure in a confined space with a small crew for a long duration mission, with occasional space walks and resupply missions. Sounds like astronaut training to me.” Image via AP.

NASA will be extending its partnership with Boeing until 2024 under a $915 million contract, the agency announced Tuesday.

Boeing has been NASA’s lead industry partner for the International Space Station since 1993, and this is the 20th year humans have been on the space station consistently.  

Boeing works closely with the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral to engineer and advance technology in order to support the ISS, which currently has an international crew of six astronauts. In its time, the ISS has hosted more than 240 people from 19 countries, and has been the setting of more than 3,000 experiments on board. 

In Florida, Boeing also supports NASA programs like the Space Launch System and the Starliner commercial crew capsule.

On Monday, at a virtual conference for Pinellas County students, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that astronaut Mike Fincke will be flying on the Boeing Starliner next year. Boeing is using this craft to send astronauts to the ISS.