Ball Aerospace & Technologies will manufacture the second Operational Land Imager instrument for NASA‘s Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite under a potential six-year, $19.3 million sole-source letter contract.
The company said Thursday it will build Operational Land Imager-2, which works to generate satellite imagery that will support studies on the impact of natural and man-induced activities on Earth’s surface.
Ball Aerospace will perform work through Mar. 31, 2021.
NASA collaborates with the U.S. Geological Survey on the Landsat 9 mission and plans to launch the satellite in 2023.
That program started in April and aims to build on the capabilities of Landsat 8, including an upgrade to the Goddard Space Flight Center-built Thermal Infrared Sensor with a longer design lifetime.