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| Company type | Wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation |
|---|---|
| Industry | Spacecraft, Defense, Scientific Instruments |
| Founded | 1956 |
| Defunct | 16 February 2024  |
| Headquarters | Broomfield, Colorado |
| Owner | Ball Corporation |
| Website | www.BallAerospace.com |
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. (commonly Ball Aerospace) is an American manufacturer of spacecraft, components, and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation (NYSE: BLL), with primary offices in Boulder and facilities in Broomfield and Westminster in Colorado, with smaller offices in New Mexico, Ohio, Northern Virginia, Missouri, and Maryland.
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 Corporation, Ball Aerospace was cited in 2014 as the 88th largest defense contractor in the world. Both parent and subsidiary headquarters are co-located in Broomfield, Colorado.
Participating projects
Near-Future
- James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to study the formation of the earliest stars in the universe
- Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), pollution monitoring for North America
- Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), pollution monitoring for East Asia
Current
- The Orbital Express autonomous satellite servicing mission
- 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 WorldView-2 earth observation satellite.
- The WorldView-3 earth observation satellite.
- The Opticks remote sensing data visualization application.
- The Sentinel space observatory, a satellite in Venusian orbit which will scout for hazardous asteroids.
- The Arizona State University (ASU), thermal emission imaging system (E-THEMIS) for Nasa's mission to study the Jupiter moon, Europa.
- The Joint Polar Satellite System satellite for forecasting and severe weather warnings to replace the Suomi NPP satellite.
Historical
- The Kepler Space Observatory satellite to search for habitable planets
- DigitalGlobe's remote sensing spacecraft: QuickBird (with Orbital Sciences Corporation), WorldView-1, and WorldView-2
- The instrumentation for the Spitzer Space Telescope. Ball Aerospace developed the Cryogenic Telescope Assembly (CTA) and two of the three science instruments: the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) and the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS).
- Instrument packages for the Hubble Telescope, including the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), all which were installed on the observatory during the Space Shuttle mission STS-125 in 2009. After the servicing mission was completed, all of Hubble's scientific instruments are of Ball Aerospace manufacture. Ball also built the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), which corrected an early defect in the Hubble's main mirror, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instruments.
- AEROS
- CALIPSO, a joint NASA and CNES environmental spacecraft
- CloudSat, a NASA Earth observation spacecraft
- 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
- The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) HiRISE camera
- Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) conformal antennas
- High-Gain Antenna Gimbal (HGAG) and the Panoramic-camera Mast Assembly (PMA) for the Mars Exploration Rover
- Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO)
- Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Ball Aerospace developed and built the cryogenically cooled telescope, dewar and sunshade
- The Mast Mounted Sight for the OH-58D Kiowa helicopter
- SBUV/2 Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Radiometer
- The Suomi NPP satellite for forecasting and severe weather warnings.
References
- "Defense News Top 100". Defense News Research. 2014.
- Orbital Express Archived June 10, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- DigitalGlobe announces Ball building WorldView 2 satellite
- WorldView-3
- Opticks
- "Ball Aerospace to develop thermal imaging system for Nasa's Europa mission".
- Joint Polar Satellite System
- Suomi NPP
- Kepler Space Observatory Archived 2006-10-18 at the Wayback Machine
- Yenne, Bill (1985). The Encyclopedia of US Spacecraft. Exeter Books (A Bison Book), New York. ISBN 0-671-07580-2.p.12 AEROS
- Suomi NPP
External links
Categories:- Ball Corporation
- Aerospace companies of the United States
- Spacecraft manufacturers
- Manufacturing companies based in Colorado
- Companies based in Boulder, Colorado
- Companies based in Broomfield, Colorado
- Manufacturing companies established in 1956
- 1956 establishments in Colorado
- Science and technology in Colorado
- American companies established in 1956