NASA picks Eric Schmidt’s rocket company for Mars mission, setting up a race with SpaceX

Relativity Space—a rocket maker acquired by former Google executive chair Eric Schmidt last year after stumbling on the path to orbit—might just beat SpaceX to Mars. On Tuesday, NASA said it hired the company to build a spacecraft to house a suite of scientific instruments, launch it into space, and fly it to Mars. The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Station, or Firefly Aerospace to put a lander on the Moon. The government agency handles the science, while the private company provides low-cost infrastructure.

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