Ball Aerospace & Technologies has conducted spectometer testing and verification activities on an instrument built to measure air quality across North America. NASA selected the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution technology as the first Earth Venture instrument to measure levels of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and aerosols in the atmosphere that affect human health […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies has completed a six-month study on the wide field instrument for a NASA observatory that seeks to support the agency’s astrophysics research mission. The company said Monday it examined WFI technology and scientific requirements for NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope currently under development as a follow-on project to the James Webb Space Telescope. WFIRST is designed to capture images […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies has won a potential $13.3 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to design, develop and deliver a testbed for Hallmark software and hardware platforms. The Defense Department said Friday that Ball Aerospace’s systems engineering solutions unit will build a testbed architecture that the military branch can apply to space command-and-control tasks, implement […] More

NASA has selected Ball Aerospace & Technologies to design and develop a cryostat for a science mission that aims to measure emissions from the interstellar medium and study the life cycle of interstellar gas in the Milky Way. Ball Aerospace said Thursday it will build the cryostat to generate a temperature-controlled for detectors of the University of Arizona-led Galactic/Extragalactic Ultralong Duration Balloon […] More

Aerojet Rocketdyne on Friday inaugurated a facility for missile technology integration and testing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida shortly after the rocket manufacturer completed its acquisition of the Coleman Aerospace business from L3 Technologies. Coleman Aerospace and economic development agency Space Florida collaborated to renovate the Space Coast Integration & Test facility that was previously […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies has received a potential five-year, $9.5 million contract from NASA to continue to provide sustaining engineering support services for the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership Sustainability satellite. The indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity contract has a minimum task ordering value of $50,000 and covers engineering services to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s office of […] More

Engineers have completed the first “Center of Curvature” test on the primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in order to measure the shape of the mirror before the telescope goes through a series of launch environment tests. NASA engineers collaborated with technicians from Ball Aerospace & Technologies and the Space Telescope Science Institute to conduct […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and XTAR have demonstrated a high-throughput intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance service on a C-130 hatch with the use of the former company’s AIRLINK X-1 antenna. AIRLINK X-1 was certified to access XTAR satellites after a terminal sent 4.5 megabits per second of data through the XTAR-LANT satellite during the demonstration that occurred […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies has entered a partnership with World View to test the latter’s Stratollite above-earth balloon vehicle for remote sensing applications. The collaboration will involve a long-duration Stratollite flight to explore the possible commercial applications of remote sensing, Ball Aerospace said Thursday. Debra Facktor Lepore, Ball Aerospace vice president and general manager of strategic operations, said the partnership also looks […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has received a $18.2 million contract to design, test and deliver a cryocooler for NASA’s Landsat-9 spacecraft. Ball Aerospace will build two stages of cooling materials into the Thermal Infrared Sensor-2 instrument Cryocooler, NASA said Tuesday. The first cooling stage will be for a layer of thermal shielding and the […] More

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. has started to test a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather prediction and environmental monitoring satellite in a simulated setting. The Joint Polar Satellite System satellite will undergo a series of acoustic, vibration, and electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility tests at a facility Boulder, Colorado where the company built the spacecraft, Ball Aerospace said Friday. […] More

NASA has completed a series of environmental and functional tests on software and systems in a Ball Aerospace & Technologies-built spacecraft designed to demonstrate a green propellant alternative to hydrazine. The space agency plans to launch in 2017 the Ball Configurable Platform-100 small satellite in an effort to carry and demonstrate the AF-M315E fuel as part […] More