Nasa has extended the International Space Station (ISS) contract for sustaining engineering with Boeing for five years, at a value of $1.24bn.

Under the extension, Boeing will provide sustaining engineering for hardware and software on the US segment of the ISS, and common hardware and software for the international partners.

Work will also include the management of ISS subsystems, analytical integration and flight support, on-orbit engineering support, monitoring and trending system performance, and anomaly resolution, specialty engineering and oversight of ongoing maintenance.

Boeing vice-president and programme manager for the ISS Joy Bryant said that Boeing’s knowledge of the space station enables them to safely fly and operate the station until 2015, set the stage to enable ISS operations until 2020, and potentially extend operations to 2028.

The overall ISS contract also includes purchasing spare components and modifying current systems.