The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently awarded Lockheed Martin a one-year contract extension on the Cargo Mission Contract 2 valued at $22 million.

The extension ensures continuation of processing services, including support planning, coordination, preparation and packing of standardized containers for cargo delivery to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

Through this extension, Lockheed Martin will also manage Flight Crew Equipment support, which includes buying, maintaining and preparing items for the ISS crew such as clothing, housekeeping and personal hygiene items, laptop computers and audio and visual equipment.

The extension begins April 1 and is the first of four options in the original Cargo Mission Contract awarded in December 2010.

"Lockheed Martin has a history of outstanding performance on the Cargo Mission Contract, providing the International Space Station program with affordable, responsive and flexible solutions," said Rick Hieb, vice president of exploration and mission support for Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions.

"We look forward to continuing our support to NASA and the International Space Station with innovative and efficient processing to meet their future cargo provisioning needs."

Through this program, Lockheed Martin manages, stores and maintains more than 3 million items for the ISS crew. Additionally, the team annually exports and ships about 25,000 pounds of cargo to launch locations around the world, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Japan, French Guiana and the United States.

As the ISS program continues to evolve, Lockheed Martin has been flexible in responding to and supporting a variety of changes in manifests. The team has quickly worked late requests to keep the ISS supplied with critical items to sustain the crew and continue important scientific research.

Lockheed Martin also supports NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston by providing systems engineering and analysis, control center design, development and operations, life sciences services, human in-the-loop simulations, and a broad range of engineering, science and technical services activities.