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Ball Aerospace
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., commonly Ball Aerospace, was an American manufacturer of spacecraft, components and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. Until 2024, the firm was a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation, with primary offices in Boulder, Colorado, and facilities in Broomfield and Westminster in Colorado, with smaller offices in New Mexico, Ohio, northern Virginia, Missouri and Maryland. It was acquired by BAE Systems Inc. in 2024, and is operated as a new division within BAE called Space & Mission systems. History 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's first spacecraft, the Orbiting Solar Observatory satellites. The company has been responsible for numerous technological and scientific projects and continues to provide aerospac ...
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Subsidiary
A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidiary company. Unlike regional branches or divisions, subsidiaries are considered to be distinct entities from their parent companies; they are required to follow the laws of where they are incorporated, and they maintain their own executive leadership. Two or more subsidiaries primarily controlled by same entity/group are considered to be sister companies of each other. Subsidiaries are a common feature of modern business, and most multinational corporations organize their operations via the creation and purchase of subsidiary companies. Examples of holding companies are Berkshire Hathaway, Jefferies Financial Group, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Citigroup, which have subsidiaries involved in many different Industry (e ...
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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 launched 8 October 2009 to become DigitalGlobe's third satellite in orbit, joining WorldView-1 which was launched in 2007 and QuickBird which was launched in 2001. It takes a new photograph of any place on Earth every 1.1 days. Design Ball Aerospace built the spacecraft, which includes an optical telescope that can image objects in diameter. Launch WorldView-2 was launched 8 October 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Delta II flying in the 7920 configuration. The launch vehicle was provided by the United Launch Alliance and launch services were administered by Boeing. History On 19 July 2016, the Joint Space Operations Center reported a debris causing event of at least 9 observable pieces, after which DigitalGlobe demonstrated the satellit ...
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James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, List of the most distant astronomical objects, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the Population III star, first stars and the Galaxy formation and evolution, formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets. Although the Webb's mirror diameter is 2.7 times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, it produces images of comparable optical resolution, resolution because it observes in the longer-wavelength infrared spectrum. The longer the wavelength of the spectrum, the larger the information-gathering surface required (mirrors in the infrared spectrum or antenna a ...
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Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph
The Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS or HRS) was an ultraviolet spectrograph installed on the Hubble Space Telescope during its original construction, and it was launched into space as part of that space telescope aboard the Space Shuttle ''Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery'' on April 24, 1990 (STS-31). The instrument is named after 20th century rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard. One of the results was the discovery of tenuous atmosphere for Jupiter's moon Europa (moon), Europa in 1995. The gas was determined to be mostly of oxygen, molecular oxygen (O2). The surface pressure of Europa's atmosphere is 0.1 pascal (unit), μPa, or 10−12 times that of the Earth. An example GHRS use was to observe the local interstellar medium in the direction towards Capella. The Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph was removed from the Hubble Space Telescope during the February, 1997, Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' mission STS-82 (also called SM-2 for Servicing Mission 2). It, and the ...
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Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement
The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) is an Corrective lens, optical correction instrument designed and built by NASA. It was created to correct the spherical aberration of the Hubble Space Telescopes primary mirror, which incorrectly focused light upon the Faint Object Camera (FOC), Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS), and Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) instruments. It was flown via shuttle to the telescope in the servicing mission STS-61, on December 2, 1993, and successfully installed over a period of eleven days. Origin Once it had been identified in 1990 that the primary mirror in the recently launched Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was defective due to it having been ground to the wrong shape, engineers at NASA came under immense pressure to fix the problem. The incorrect shape of the mirror introduced severe spherical aberration, a flaw in which light reflecting off the edge of a mirror focus (optics), focuses on a different point from t ...
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Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph
The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) is a spectrograph, also with a camera mode, installed on the Hubble Space Telescope. Aerospace engineer Bruce Woodgate of the Goddard Space Flight Center was the principal investigator and creator of the STIS. It operated continuously from 1997 until a power supply failure in August 2004. After repairs, it began operating again in 2009. The spectrograph has made many important observations, including the first spectrum of the Celestial body atmosphere, atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, HD 209458b. The STIS was installed on Hubble in 1997 during its second servicing mission (STS-82) by Mark C. Lee, Mark Lee and Steven Smith (astronaut), Steven Smith, replacing the High Resolution Spectrograph and the Faint Object Spectrograph. It was designed to operate for five years. On August 3, 2004, an electronic failure rendered STIS inoperable, ending its use 2 years beyond its predicted lifespan. In order to bring it back to operational ...
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Near Infrared Camera And Multi-Object Spectrometer
The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) is a Measuring instrument, scientific instrument for infrared astronomy, installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), operating from 1997 to 1999, and from 2002 to 2008. Images produced by NICMOS contain data from the near-infrared part of the light spectrum. NICMOS was conceived and designed by the NICMOS Instrument Definition Team centered at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, USA. NICMOS is an imager and Multi-Object Spectrometer, multi-object spectrometer built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. that allows the HST to observe infrared light, with wavelengths between 0.8 and 2.4 micrometers, providing imaging and slitless spectrophotometric capabilities. NICMOS contains three near-infrared detectors in three optical channels providing high (~ 0.1 arcsecond) resolution, coronagraphic and polarimetric imaging, and slitless spectroscopy in 11-, 19-, and 52-arcsecond square fields of view. Each optical ch ...
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Advanced Camera For Surveys
The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) is a third-generation axial instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The initial design and scientific capabilities of ACS were defined by a team based at Johns Hopkins University. ACS was assembled and tested extensively at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and the Goddard Space Flight Center and underwent a final flight-ready verification at the Kennedy Space Center before integration in the cargo bay of the Columbia orbiter. It was launched on March 1, 2002, as part of Servicing Mission 3B (STS-109) and installed in HST on March 7, replacing the Faint Object Camera (FOC), the last original instrument. ACS cost US$86 million at that time. ACS is a highly versatile instrument that became the primary imaging instrument aboard HST. It offered several important advantages over other HST instruments: three independent, high-resolution channels covering the ultraviolet to the near-infrared regions of the spectrum, a large detector ar ...
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Wide Field Camera 3
The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) is the Hubble Space Telescope's last and most technologically advanced instrument to take images in the visible spectrum. It was installed as a replacement for the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 during the first spacewalk of Space Shuttle mission STS-125 (Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4) on May 14, 2009. , WFC3 was still operating. Specifications The instrument is designed to be a versatile camera capable of imaging astronomical targets over a very wide wavelength range and with a large field of view. It is a fourth-generation instrument for Hubble. The instrument has two independent light paths: a UV and optical channel that uses a pair of charge-coupled devices (CCD) to record images from 200 to 1000  nm; and a near infrared detector array that covers the wavelength range from 800 to 1700 nm. The UV/optical channel has two CCDs, each 2048×4096 pixels, while the IR detector is 1024×1024. The focal planes of both chan ...
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Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is a science instrument that was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope during Servicing Mission 4 (STS-125) in May 2009. It is designed for ultraviolet (90–320 nm) spectroscopy of faint point sources with a resolving power of ≈1,550–24,000. Science goals include the study of the origins of large scale structure in the universe, the formation and evolution of galaxies, and the origin of stellar and planetary systems and the cold interstellar medium. COS was developed and built by the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy (CASA-ARL) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado. COS is installed into the axial instrument bay previously occupied by the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement ( COSTAR) instrument, and is intended to complement the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph ( STIS) that was repaired during the same mission. While STIS oper ...
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Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the Orbiting Solar Observatory, first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble Space Telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories program, Great Observatories. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) selects Hubble's targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) controls the spacecraft. Hubble features a mirror, and its five main instruments observe in the ultraviolet, visible spectrum, visible, and near-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Hubble's orbit outside the distortion of atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere allows it to capture extremely high-resolution images with substantially lower background lig ...
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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 100 times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope, enabled by the high angular resolution of its mirrors. Since the Earth's atmosphere absorbs the vast majority of X-rays, they are not detectable from Earth-based telescopes; therefore space-based telescopes are required to make these observations. Chandra is an Earth satellite in a 64-hour orbit, and its mission is ongoing . Chandra is one of the Great Observatories, along with the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991–2000), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (2003–2020). The telescope is named after the Nobel Prize-winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Its mission is similar to that of ESA's XMM-Newton spacecraft, also launched in ...
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