Ball chosen for NASA solar study

BROOMFIELD — NASA recently selected Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. to conduct research related to the space agency’s Extreme ultraviolet Coronal Mass Ejection and Coronal Connectivity Observatory (ECCCO) mission.

That mission “would provide astronomers with a better understanding of the sun’s coronal structure and its relationship with solar wind and eruptive events,” Ball said in a news release. 

“The middle corona is one of the least explored and little understood regions of the solar atmosphere,” Ball Aerospace vice president Alberto Conti said in the release. “The ECCCO mission would finally fill a major observational gap for the scientific community, expanding our knowledge about the transformations of matter and energy taking place within the sun’s middle corona.”

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Katharine Reeves, a solar astrophysicist with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, is the principal investigator for the ECCCO study.