Who builds it, who pays

The civilian space agency: it sets the missions, oversees ten field centers (including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech runs for it) and buys most of its hardware and services from industry.

Launches most of the mass sent to orbit worldwide on its Falcon rockets, flies NASA’s crews in Dragon, and is building Starship, one of the two landers for Artemis.

Builds the New Glenn rocket, the BE-4 engine that also powers Vulcan, and the Blue Moon landers.

Prime contractor for the SLS core stage and the Space Station, and builder of the Starliner crew capsule.

Builds Orion and the next generation of GPS satellites, and built NOAA’s GOES-R weather satellites.

Makes the solid rocket boosters for SLS and Vulcan, flies Cygnus cargo ships, and built the Webb telescope.

The Boeing–Lockheed Martin joint venture that launches Atlas V and Vulcan for government and commercial customers.

Builds the RS-25 engines for SLS through Aerojet Rocketdyne; its RL10 upper-stage engine business became a separate company, Rocketdyne, in August 2026.

Supplies Orion’s service modules, flies European astronauts on Dragon and Artemis, and partners on Webb and other science missions.

Builds the European Service Module for Orion in Bremen, under contract to ESA.

Operates the nation’s weather satellites; NASA builds and launches them for it.

Operates the Landsat satellites and keeps their archive, free to everyone since 2008.

Operates GPS and buys national-security launches from SpaceX, ULA and Blue Origin.