Ball Aerospace-built Kepler spacecraft launches from Cape Canaveral

The Ball Aerospace-built Kepler spacecraft carrying the largest camera ever sent by NASA beyond Earth’s orbit, successfully launched aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 10:48 pm EST, on Friday, March 6, 2009.

Ball Aerospace designed and built Kepler’s photometer and spacecraft, employing expertise from its previous NASA missions including instruments for the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and the Deep Impact mission. Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in the habitable zone.

The Kepler photometer has a wide field of view 0.95 meter aperture, Schmidt telescope, with a 1.4-meter primary mirror. The integration and test of the Kepler photometer, utilized Ball Aerospace’s new 1.5 meter optical test capability for the first time. The photometer features a focal plane array of 42 charge-coupled devices (CCDs) at the center, with more than 95 million pixels. Kepler’s CCD array is the most complex assembly ever undertaken by Ball Aerospace.

“The pioneering Kepler mission advanced Ball’s large optics and focal plane technologies in support of NASA’s space science missions,” said David L. Taylor, president and CEO of Ball Aerospace. “The extraordinary interest in extrasolar planets will make this the ‘mission to watch’ for several years.”

The Kepler planet-hunting mission will search for Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars to provide valuable insight about Earth’s origin while also acting as a pathfinder mission for future missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013. Ball Aerospace is the principal subcontractor for the Webb telescope, contributing advanced optical technology and the lightweight mirror system.