WASHINGTON — Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems outlasted all would-be competitors to win a $250 million NASA contract to modernize an Earth science data-handling system two decades and nearly $2.5 billion in the making.

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Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. He was named senior staff writer in 2004, a position he held until being named...