Ball Aerospace, NOAA team on weather satellite

By Ryan Dionne, Boulder County Business Report

 
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder expects to receive a contract from NASA via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop a second platform for a U.S. civilian weather satellite system.

For years, NOAA worked with the U.S. Air Force and NASA on a joint National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, but White House officials restructured the program for the 2011 budget and gave NOAA responsibility for one satellite and the U.S. Department of Defense responsibility for another, said Andrew Carson, NASA's program executive.

The new satellite program, called the Joint Polar Satellite System, is being managed by NOAA and will still be used to track weather.

Carson said NASA, which is acting as the acquisition agent to oversee the contract and delivery, fully intends to contract Ball to build the satellite that's expected to launch in 2014.

Formalities, such as another company coming forward to say it can build the same satellite under the same timeline at a lower cost, are the only things that could prevent Ball from receiving the contract.

"We're encouraged by NOAA's decision to procure an NPP-clone to fulfill the Joint Polar Satellite System," Ball spokeswoman Roz Brown said in an e-mail. "We feel this is the best approach to meet the 2014 mission requirement and is clearly in the best interest of the civil weather and climate community, as well as the taxpayer."