Houston-based technology company KBR Inc. (NYSE: KBR) landed a sizable contract to provide planning and preparation services to several NASA programs, including the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The deal is worth up to $1.9 billion and runs for a base period of five years, with two options to extend by two years each for a potential total contract length of nine years, KBR said.
KBR will work at the JSC as well as the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The services provided under the contract include mission planning and preparation, astronaut and mission control center training, real-time flight execution, and future exploration vehicle design for all of NASA’s human spaceflight programs under the JSC’s Flight Operations Directorate.
The specific programs KBR will support as part of the contract include the International Space Station, Commercial Crew, Boeing Starliner, Orion, Space Launch System, Gateway, Human Lander System, Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility for lunar spacewalks, and low-Earth-orbit commercialization.
The Integrated Mission Operations Contract III follows the IMOC II contract KBR has supported for the past nine years.
The contract also follows KBR taking part in a joint venture with the newly public Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines (Nasdaq: LUNR). In April, the JV landed a $719 million contract from NASA related to its Joint Polar Satellite System program and Exploration & In-space Services projects division.
Outside of its space ventures, KBR has contracted for the United States Army and for a blue ammonia project in Beaumont, Texas, that is the brainchild of Amsterdam-based fertilizers company OCI NV.
Other Houston companies that have landed NASA contracts recently include Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace, which secured a $5 million contract each to redesign space suits to work for NASA’s upcoming return to the moon aboard the Artemis III mission. Axiom unveiled an earlier version of its spacesuit, the AxEMU, after landing a separate $228.5 million NASA contract in September 2022.
Axiom Space, Intuitive Machines and North Carolina-based Collins Aerospace are all tenants at the Houston Spaceport, with Axiom building out its 22-acre headquarters campus at the site.
At last year’s State of Space address, NASA JSC Director Vanessa Wyche said recent developments in Houston were tailored toward low-Earth orbit, which involves moving manufacturing, research and tourism into space-based facilities. The Spaceport, which is at Ellington Airport, is providing additional facilities to spur research and development in the LEO sector.
Another proponent of Houston’s role in the space economy is Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini. In the build-up to Axiom’s second successful mission, Axiom Mission 2, Suffredini said in April that the region could expect to see job growth as interested companies will need testing and demonstration services before anything can go into space.
