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* [[Deep Impact (space mission)|Deep Impact]] spacecraft. Ball Aerospace designed and built the spacecraft and all of its instrument packages for [[NASA]].
* [[Deep Impact (space mission)|Deep Impact]] spacecraft. Ball Aerospace designed and built the spacecraft and all of its instrument packages for [[NASA]].
* Star trackers for NASA's [[Space Shuttle program]]
* Star trackers for NASA's [[Space Shuttle program]]
* The [[Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]] (MRO) HiRISE camera
* The [[Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]] (MRO) [[HiRISE]] camera
* [[F-35 Lightning II|Joint Strike Fighter]] (JSF) conformal antennas
* [[F-35 Lightning II|Joint Strike Fighter]] (JSF) conformal antennas
* High-Gain Antenna Gimbal (HGAG) and the Panoramic-camera Mast Assembly (PMA)for the [[Mars Exploration Rover]]
* High-Gain Antenna Gimbal (HGAG) and the Panoramic-camera Mast Assembly (PMA)for the [[Mars Exploration Rover]]

Revision as of 12:35, 26 February 2008

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Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. (commonly Ball Aerospace) is a manufacturer of spacecraft, components, and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corp. (NYSE: BLL), with primary offices and facilities in Boulder, Broomfield and Westminster in Colorado, with smaller offices in New Mexico, Ohio, Georgia, and Northern Virginia.

Ball Aerospace began building pointing controls for military rockets in 1956, and later won a contract to build one of NASA’s first spacecraft, the Orbiting Solar Observatory. Over the years, the company has been responsible for numerous technological and scientific projects and continues to provide aerospace technology to NASA and related industries.

Ball Aerospace also has many other products and services for the aerospace industry, including lubricants, optical systems, star trackers and antennas. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ball Corp., Ball Aerospace was cited in 2005 as the 99th largest defense contractor in the world.[1] Both parent and subsidiary headquarters are co-located in Broomfield, Colorado.

Participating projects

Current

  • The Orbital Express[2] autonomous satellite servicing mission
  • The Kepler Space Observatory[3] satellite to search for habitable planets
  • The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study the formation of the earliest stars in the universe.
  • The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) Program, which, over a seven-month mission in a polar orbit will map the entire sky in multiple mid-far infrared wavelengths. This crucial mission may find close and cool objects to our sun never before detected. It will also act as a predecessor to the JWST Program.
  • The Opticks[4] remote sensing application.

Historical

References

  1. ^ "Defense News Top 100". Defense News Research. 2005. Retrieved 2006-07-29.
  2. ^ Oribital Express
  3. ^ Kepler Space Observatory
  4. ^ Opticks
  5. ^ Yenne, Bill (1985). The Encyclopedia of US Spacecraft. Exeter Books (A Bison Book), New York. ISBN 0-671-07580-2.p.12 AEROS