Boeing has selected US-based engineering and scientific services company Bastion Technologies to help enhance the latter's expertise and opportunities in the aerospace market.

Selected under Nasa’s Mentor-Protégé small business development programme, the new collaboration will share practices in several areas, including manufacturing, quality, marketing and business development over the next 18 months.

The Mentor-Protégé programme supports Nasa prime contractors or mentors to help small businesses (protégés) to develop expertise required to perform the space agency’s work.

For a period of almost two decades, Bastion has been supplying expertise to various Boeing programmes and the latest selection aims to project the company a standalone Nasa contractor among other roles.

Bastion Technologies president Jorge Hernandez said: “We have cherished our relationship with Boeing, which began with our work on the digital pre-assembly of the International Space Station to our work on today’s CST-100 Starliner programme.

“We look forward to many more years of cutting-edge work with Boeing and strengthening our aerospace ties through this mentorship programme."

One of 26 Nasa prime contractors, Boeing has been serving as mentors and commits resources in supporting and developing its supplier network.

Last year, the company had committed more than $5bn to contracts with small and diverse businesses.

Boeing commercial programmes vice-president and programme manager John Mulholland said: “Bastion is an excellent example of how Boeing and small businesses can collaborate and grow as teammates and as individual companies.

“Through Mentor-Protégé, we’ll accelerate our common support of Nasa’s critical work advancing human spaceflight capabilities.”

Meanwhile, the company has collaborated with Emirates Flight Training Academy to develop a comprehensive training curriculum and software infrastructure to help train pilot cadets.

Image: Boeing commercial programmes vice-president and programme manager John Mulholland shows CST-100 Starliner flight hardware to Nasa Kennedy Space Center director Robert Cabana and Bastion Technologies president Jorge Hernandez. Photo: courtesy of Boeing.