Go into the mission screen and look at the tabs at the bottom. You can contact them there without having to travel to thier location. I had the same problem , thinking I had to travel to them to get the reward.
I have found that holding on to the missions that you can turn in that give you a BOFF a good idea until you upgrade your ship and see what slots you have that open. You can end up picking BOFF's that you can't use other than on ground missions. Having say all Science Officers is a bad idea when you need an Engineer to…