Ball Aerospace: Where Satellites Come From

When it comes to space, what goes up must be sturdy, safe and secure if it's to live very long. Satellites must survive the bone-rattling jostle and pressure of launch, and once they reach orbit, they've got to weather the vast temperature changes they experience with every sunrise and sunset. Their skins must be thick enough to survive pummeling by micro-debris, and they'd better have trusty gyroscopes to be able to change directions or keep their balance.

That's why space-bound objects undergo thorough testing at firms like Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., builders of satellite skeletons, gyroscopes, advanced instruments, and mason jars. (Well, that's a different division.)

Ball Corporation, the parent company, started out in 1880 making wooden-jacketed tin cans for paint, and added a hit line of home canning jars four years later. Glass mason jars for home canning still bear the Ball logo. The company started making aerospace devices in 1956, and has built numerous spacecraft for NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Defense Department, among others.

Ball's research and development campus in Boulder, Colo., was the birthing grounds of lofty craft like the satellite that discovered the ozone hole; the Kepler planet-hunting telescope; most of the instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope; and the satellites that provide images for Google Earth.

PopSci recently paid a visit and got a glimpse of the arduous process of building and testing a spacecraft.