CAREERS
IN AEROSPACE
Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corporation
Ball Aerospace
built NASA’s second satellite in history; flew the first Skylab science
instruments; and built the first space-based cryogenically cooled telescope
to map the universe in the infrared. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
branched from Ball Corporation, the “fruit jar maker,” entering the
aerospace industry in 1956 with the acquisition of Control Cells Inc.
The merger was renamed Ball Brothers Research Corporation.
Shortly after the
acquisition, Ball employees assisted physicists from the University
of Colorado in designing scientific payloads for Sounding rockets.
For more than four
decades, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., headquartered in Boulder,
Colorado, has been the fast, agile, responsive supplier of choice for
delivering small to medium-sized spacecraft, civilian and defense payloads,
science instruments and a wide range of subsystems, components, software
and support services. Our people have gained an outstanding reputation
for building hardware and software that deliver superior mission performance
and for providing responsive system engineering support services.
The pioneering
spirit that is the foundation of Ball Aerospace and our commitment to
creating our own future in commercial markets are reflected in a new
“intrepreneurship” initiative. Our internal Business Incubator has ignited
the entrepreneurial imaginations of our employees and has encouraged
innovative concepts for new products and new business lines.
Decades of experience
allow Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. (BATC) to provide complete
solutions to complex defense needs — from mission analysis through complete
mission development and production, to operations and logistics support.
Ball Aerospace competes in the design, development, manufacture and
launch of complete space systems, special-purpose spacecraft and payloads
composed of instruments and sensors that span the electro-optical, microwave
and radio frequency spectra. Ball Aerospace also develops sophisticated
software and simulation codes and provides engineering support services
for aircraft flight systems, test and personnel training.
Ball Aerospace’s
state-of-the-art facilities support its capability to design, build
and test a complete space system from payload to satellite bus and ground
control. Ball facilities fulfill requirements for the design and test
of antennas, satellites, electro-optical instruments, spacecraft subsystems,
cryogenic devices, and video systems for commercial, military, and space
applications.
Ball Aerospace
and NASA’s relationship was born in 1959 when NASA awarded Ball contracts
for the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO) satellite program, which consisted
of the design, development, and launch of a series of seven satellites,
and for many of their scientific instruments. The OSO satellite series
was the first to make observations of the sun, undistorted by the Earth’s
atmosphere.
Since those early
years together, Ball Aerospace has developed more than 130 complex instruments
and 12 spacecraft for NASA missions to explore the universe and discover
more about our own planet. Our hardware has flown on a variety of platforms,
including the space shuttle satellites, planetary probes, aircraft,
balloons, and sub orbital rockets. Despite a business environment that
challenged all aerospace companies in the ‘90s, Ball Aerospace continued
to grow.
Ball Aerospace
expanded into Australia, with Ball Aerospace Australia (BAA) in the
mid 1990s. BAA provides the same type of technical engineering services
to the Australian government as Ball Systems Engineering Services does
in the US marketplace.
In 1997, Ball’s
Commercial Products and Technologies Division introduced a new line
of airborne cameras capable of providing pilots with real-time images
of landing gear, flaps, engines and other external systems.
Ball Aerospace
built two instruments for the Chandra X-ray Observatory which was launched
July 1999 with two Ball-built instruments onboard. The Aspect Camera
and the Science Instrument Module were designed by Ball to help Chandra
study astronomical objects such as spinning neutron stars, black holes,
and quasars.
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