Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. 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 Ball Corporation is an American company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. It is best known for its early production of glass jars, lids, and related products used for home canning. Since its founding in Buffalo, New York, in 1880, when it w ...

(

NYSE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its liste ...

: BALL), with primary offices in Boulder, Colorado, and facilities in Broomfield and

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

, with smaller offices in

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, northern

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

and

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. Ball Aerospace began building pointing controls for military rockets in 1956 (the aerospace part of the Ball Corporation was then known as Ball Brothers Research Corporation) and later won a contract to build some of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

's first spacecraft, the

Orbiting Solar Observatory The Orbiting Solar Observatory (abbreviated OSO) Program was the name of a series of American space telescopes primarily intended to study the Sun, though they also included important non-solar experiments. Eight were launched successfully into ...

satellites. The company has been responsible for numerous technological and scientific projects and continues to provide aerospace technology to NASA and related industries. Other products and services for the aerospace industry include lubricants, optical systems,

star tracker A star tracker is an optical device that measures the positions of stars using photocells or a camera. As the positions of many stars have been measured by astronomers to a high degree of accuracy, a star tracker on a satellite or spacecraft may ...

s 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

* The

Orbital Express image:Orbital Express 1.jpg, Orbital Express: ASTRO and NEXTSat Orbital Express was a space mission managed by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a team led by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center ( ...

autonomous satellite servicing mission * The

WorldView-2 ''WorldView-2'' (WV 2) is a commercial Earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe. ''WorldView-2'' provides commercially available panchromatic imagery of resolution, and eight-band multispectral imagery with resolution. It was launch ...

Earth observation satellite. *

AEROS (satellite) AEROS satellites were to study the aeronomy i. e. the science of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere, in particular the F region under the strong influence of solar extreme ultraviolet radiation. To this end the spectrum of this radiation w ...

p.12 AEROS * Ralph (''New Horizons'' instrument) *

Chandra X-ray Observatory The Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), is a Flagship-class space telescope launched aboard the during STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. Chandra is sensitive to X-ray sources 1 ...

aspect camera (star tracker) and SIM (science instrument module) *

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most vers ...

: seven science instruments ( COS, WFC3, ACS, NICMOS, STIS, COSTAR, and GHRS), two star trackers, five major equipment subsystems, and custom tools to support service missions * James Webb Space Telescope optical mirror systemBall Aerospace - Webb Space Telescope
/ref>

References

External links

Ball Aerospace website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ball Aerospace Ball Corporation Aerospace companies of the United States Defense 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