NASA has extended a primary contract for the International Space Station for On-Orbit Acceptance and Vehicle Sustaining services to The Boeing Company of Houston.

Work under the contract extension will provide delivery, on- orbit acceptance, sustaining engineering and postproduction support for hardware and software of the U.S. segment of the Station, and for common hardware and software provided to the International Partners and Participants. The work also will include providing management of the majority of Space Station subsystems and specialty engineering disciplines such as materials, electrical parts, environments and electromagnetic effects.

The basic period of the cost-plus-award-fee contract extension is two years and nine months with an estimated value as much as $1 billion. Four six-month options are available and, if fully exercised, could bring the total contract value to $1.62 billion. Work on the contract will be performed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., as well as in other locations inside and outside of the United States.

This extension was awarded as part of a restructuring of Station contracts. The goal is to consolidate work, increase efficiency, increase accountability, and transition the program's contract strategy from development and construction of hardware to orbital operations. Information about Space Station contract strategy is available on the Internet at: http://jsc-web-pub.jsc.nasa.gov/bd01/ISS/Default.asp.