Ball Aerospace Hosts Media Briefing on Scheduled Launch of NPP Weather & Climate Satellite

August 04, 2011

When:

Monday, August 8, 2011 – 10:30–11:30 a.m.



Where:  

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.


1600 Commerce Street


Boulder, CO Ball Aerospace



Call-in #:

1-888-669-2803


Access Code: 5021430



Subject:

Weather doesn't come from the weather channel.  Much of the weather forecasting we rely on every day comes from polar orbiting satellites that provide up to five days of advance warning about severe weather. These satellites also provide 93 percent of the data used in National Weather Service forecast models. Just last week, President Obama reiterated that weather satellites are critical to our nation's infrastructure.  




Ball Aerospace has completed final compatibility testing for NPP – the nation's next weather satellite – and the five scientific instruments that will fly aboard the satellite when it launches from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, slated for October 25.  Under contract to Goddard Space Flight Center, Ball Aerospace designed and built the NPP satellite bus and one of the satellite's five advanced-technology instruments, and integrated all of the instruments.




NASA's National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) is the nation's next generation operational weather and climate mission. The remote-sensing instruments aboard NPP will measure the Earth's atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, humidity sounding, land and ocean biological activity and cloud and aerosol properties. NPP will bridge critical weather data collection requirements as it awaits launch of the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) later this decade, already in development at Ball Aerospace.



Participants Include:


David L. Taylor, President & CEO, Ball Aerospace  


Andrew Carson, Program Executive, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA  


Jack Hayes, Director, National Weather Service, NOAA


Waleed Abdelati, Chief Scientist, NASA


Mary Kicza, Assistant Administrator for Satellite and Information, NOAA  


Instrument & Ground Providers: Ball Aerospace, ITT, Northrop Grumman and the Raytheon Company



Additional information about NPP can be found at:


http://www.ballaerospace.com/page.jsp?page=73


http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/main/index.html


http://npoess.noaa.gov/index.php?pg=npp



Contact:

Roz Brown


Media Relations Manager


Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.


303-533-6059 or 720-581-3135


rbrown@ball.com



**A clean room tour will follow to allow reporters and photographers a close-up encounter with the spacecraft.  

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 information visit www.ballaerospace.com.

Ball Corporation (NYSE: BLL) is a supplier of high quality packaging 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 14,500 people worldwide and reported 2010 sales of more than $7.6 billion. For the latest Ball news and for other company information, please visit http://www.ball.com.

(Photo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110804/LA47599)

/PRNewswire/ -- Aug. 4, 2011/

SOURCE Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.