You ask an interesting question, why not let the options expire.

My conjecture is that management is very confident on the financial path going forward. They may feel they require only  the additional $8mm of capital the option exercise would raise to see them through to incoming revenues in 2021.

If management let these options expire and then had to raise new funds in 2021, they would pay 6% fees on raising those new funds and would likely have to attach new warrants to that issue. Ultimately,  it may prove less dilutive to go with the existing apparently sub-optimal options.

I am heartened that the news release concerning this third exercise-date extension specifies that this is the "Final" extension. That speaks to the confidence management has in the substativeness of the forthcoming contract.