Ball Aerospace Wins NASA Sensing Contracts

BOULDER, Colo., March 26 -- Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been awarded three contracts to perform technology development of earth science remote-sensing instruments under NASA’s Instrument Incubator Program (IIP).

Ball Aerospace staff consultant Tom Kampe was awarded a contract as principal investigator for the spaceborne infrared atmospheric sounder for geosynchronous earth orbit (SIRAS-G). The SIRAS-G contract demonstrates technology that could form the basis of the hyperspectral environmental suite, a sensor suite being procured to replace the atmospheric sounder instrument that is now part of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) system. GOES is a system of satellites that provide observations of the Earth’s weather and environment.

Ball Aerospace teamed with R. Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado on the second award, the interferometric range transceiver (IRT) for measuring temporal gravity variations. For IRT, Ball Aerospace is developing a high-precision interspacecraft ranging instrument designed to be flown as the follow-on to the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission that is currently in orbit.

For the third contract, Ball Aerospace supported a Goddard Space Flight Center team led by cott Janz on the geostationary spectrograph (GeoSpec) for earth and atmospheric science applications. Ball Aerospace will procure and package the 2-D focal planes, design the interface electronics and test the detector subsystem.

"The three Ball Aerospace contract awards form the basis for Earth science instruments that could fly in the next decade," said Bill Gail, Ball Aerospace director of Earth Science Advanced Programs for Civil Space Systems. "These cutting-edge instruments will provide substantially improved observations of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and continents, helping us better understand our planet."

For more information, visit: www.ball.com/aerospace