Barr Associates to Build Filter Assemblies for Ball

Barr Associates of Westford, Mass., has been selected to develop, manufacture and test multispectral filters for the operational land imager that Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., of Boulder, Colo., is building for NASA's Landsat data continuity mission (LDCM), expected to be launched in 2011. LDCM will ensure the continued acquisition and availability of Landsat-like data beyond the current Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 missions. The filters are high-performance versions of a filter array technology Barr developed. Each filter assembly is comprised of nine individual spectral bands (i.e., multispectral). A full instrument compliment consists of 14 closely matched filter assemblies. NASA is building and launching the LDCM, which will be operated by the US Geological Survey. Barr filters are flying on the Landsat 7 and ETM+ imager mission, and it provided a multispectral filter for the E0-1, a technology demonstration developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory and a precursor to the LDCM.