Ball Aerospace & Technologies

Participating projects

Near-Future

• James Webb Space Telescope, to study the formation of the earliest stars in the universe
• , pollution monitoring for North America
• Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer, pollution monitoring for East Asia

  Current

• The Orbital Express autonomous satellite servicing mission
• The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer 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, thermal emission imaging system 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, WorldView-1, and WorldView-2
• The instrumentation for the Spitzer Space Telescope. Ball Aerospace developed the Cryogenic Telescope Assembly and two of the three science instruments: the Infrared Spectrograph and the Multiband Imaging Photometer.
• Instrument packages for the Hubble Telescope, including the Advanced Camera for Surveys, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3, 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, which corrected an early defect in the Hubble's main mirror, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph 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 HiRISE camera
• Joint Strike Fighter conformal antennas
• High-Gain Antenna Gimbal and the Panoramic-camera Mast Assembly for the Mars Exploration Rover
• Orbiting Solar Observatory
• Infrared Astronomical Satellite. 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.