Ball Aerospace gets NASA contract

BOULDER – Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder has been awarded a $9.7 million contract by the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. to help assess and possibly refurbish a spaceflight instrument.

Ball Aerospace, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ball Corp. (NYSE:BLL) in Broomfield, will provide technical support to assess and possibly refurbish the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE III) spaceflight instrument, which will measure gases in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

The SAGE III originally was manifested as a payload on the International Space Station until the flight was cancelled following loss of the space shuttle Columbia. The spacecraft has been in storage at Langley since January 2004.

SAGE III has not been committed to a flight mission, NASA officials said. However, if additional work is authorized, the five-year sole-source contract will allow task orders to be issued for assessment of the instrument, support of mission accommodation studies, and refurbishment and ground support equipment updates.

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