Ball Aerospace Wins
NASA Earth Sensing Contracts
(5 May 2008) Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp. has been awarded two NASA contracts that support the
agency's Science Mission Directorate 2007 Instrument Incubator Program (IIP) in
developing Earth science instrument subsystem technologies.
Ball
will also participate in a third contract as co-investigators on a study led by
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Ball Aerospace technical manager
and systems lead engineer for the CALIPSO mission, Carl Weimer, was awarded a
contract as principal investigator on the Electronically Steerable Flash Lidar.
The contract demonstrates that flash arrays can be used to profile vegetation
canopies from space, designated for the proposed Deformation, Ecosystem
Structure and Dynamics of Ice Mission.
Ball staff consultant, Christian
Grund, was awarded a contract as principal investigator for Development and
Demonstration of an Optical Autocovariance Direct Detection Wind Lidar (OAWL).
Operating from a WB-57 aircraft, the program will demonstrate OAWL's viability
to fulfill the needs of a direct detection wind mission, currently projected to
measure global tropospheric wind profiles from Low Earth Orbit in the 2015
timeframe. According to NASA and NOAA, tropospheric wind measurement is
critical to improve weather forecasts.
On the third winning effort, Ball
Aerospace supported a JPL team led by William Folkner on the Laser Ranging
Frequency Stabilization Subsystems for the Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment (GRACE) - II Mission. As co-investigators, Ball principal engineers,
Michelle Stephens and James Leitch will build and test the opto-mechanical
assembly and test the laser stabilisation subsystem.
The NASA IIP
provides instrument and instrument subsystem technology developments to enable
the National Research Council's Earth Science decadal survey mission. The
program focuses on technologies that lead to future flight instruments that are
smaller, less resource-intensive, less costly, and require less time to build.
NASA reviewed 71 proposals for this technology solicitation before awarding 21
contracts.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. supports critical
missions of important national agencies such as the Department of Defense,
NASA, NOAA and other U.S. government and commercial entities. The company
develops and manufactures spacecraft, advanced instruments and sensors,
components, data exploitation systems and RF solutions for strategic, tactical
and scientific applications. For more than 50 years, Ball Aerospace has been
responsible for numerous technological and scientific 'firsts' and acts as a
technology innovator for the aerospace market.
Ball Corporation is a
supplier of high-quality metal and plastic packaging products for beverage,
food and household products customers, and of aerospace and other technologies
and services, primarily for the U.S. government. Ball Corporation and its
subsidiaries employ more than 15,500 people world-wide and reported 2007 sales
of US$ 7.4 billion.
(source: Ball Aerospace and Technologies)
