Aren't they far behind on their Starship milestones? Why would Nasa grant them more contracts?
Rocket science is hard, everyone missing their milestones is almost expected. And SpaceX is among the more reliable partners available to NASA.
Its like saying why are you using linux, don't you know it has a knowing history of having bugs. Sure, but show me the alternative that never had bugs.
This tug not working correctly could mean dropping the ISS on a major city. So they are not gone trust some new unproven company. And there are simply not many companies that can do that stuff.
Being late on a highly complex experimental project is totally different and a different part of the company. This tug is much more likely to be derived from their existing Dragon contracts and those have an amazing track record of execution in the last decade.
Read Power Broker to get a real sense of this. Such a great book.
FWIW that image also shows Artemis III launching early 2025, but NASA has delayed that to 2026 at the earliest (unlikely), so it's not like SpaceX is holding up the mission.
It seems Axiom has been focused on a suit for Artemis interior and moon operations while Collins was specifically developing one for in-orbit EVAs, which is a separate beast.
Assuming they hand full reigns to Axiom, congrats to that team! But it does seem likely this means delays, as they now have to develop an additional suit for an additional and distinct use case. Good time to be job hunting in this field, perhaps.
For those interested, Cleo Abrams recently put out a great video testing an Axiom prototype and discussing many of the design challenges being worked on with the Axiom team.