Ball earns NASA awards for Deep Impact mission spacecraft, instruments

BOULDER – Boulder’s Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has evolved to become a leader in space technologies. Through its current and recent projects, the company has contributed to significant advances in space exploration and earth observation.

NASA recently recognized Ball Aerospace with two prestigious awards for its work on the highly successful Deep Impact mission. Ball Aerospace built the Impactor and Flyby spacecraft for the mission as well as three instruments used for navigation and science collection. The spacecraft collided with and excavated material from deep-space comet Tempel 1 in July 2005.

Additional successes in the space sector include the recent launch of two weather satellites, CloudSat and CALIPSO. The satellites will provide detailed information on clouds and aerosols, including the first global measurements of cloud properties. The information gathered will be used to help improve computer models used to simulate earth’s climate, thereby aiding global climate and weather prediction.

Late this year, Ball Aerospace hopes to see the successful launch of the NextSat Commodities Spacecraft. It delivered the spacecraft in August to Boeing Co.’s Orbital Express program for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The program is aimed at developing robotic refueling, configuration and repair of spacecraft on orbit.

One of Ball Aerospace’s exciting current projects is the James Webb Space Telescope, a follow-on mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. It will be able to make observations in less than 1/100 of the time required by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists hope the telescope’s observations will provide insight on how the universe evolved.

Locally, Ball Aerospace is building the Worldview remote-sensing satellite for Longmont-based DigitalGlobe. The Worldview satellite will replace the QuickBird, a high-resolution commercial imaging system, and will provide even greater imaging capabilities.

The successes achieved by Ball Aerospace have led to considerable growth at its Broomfield and Boulder facilities this year. At the Aerospace Manufacturing Center in Broomfield, the company added nearly 35,000 square feet of manufacturing space. In Boulder, it opened a new Detector Technology Center and is expanding its building to accommodate a new, much larger thermal vacuum chamber.

According to Roz Brown, media relations manager, the company has nearly doubled its sales in five years, to $695 million in 2005. The company contributes 12 percent of Ball Corp.’s revenues.

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