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Ball Corp., CU instruments will boost Hubble Space Telescope

By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 21, 2008 at 9:05 p.m.

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Ball Aerospace developed the optical assembly, instrument electronics and software for the wide field camera 3 to improve the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery efficiency by a factor of approximately 10.

Photo by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

Ball Aerospace developed the optical assembly, instrument electronics and software for the wide field camera 3 to improve the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery efficiency by a factor of approximately 10.

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Colorado is poised to play a key role in a $900 million NASA mission to give the Hubble Space Telescope a new lease on life.

NASA officials hope the service and repair mission - set for Oct. 8 - will make Hubble more powerful and keep the telescope operating another decade.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. built two new science instruments that space shuttle astronauts are scheduled to install on Hubble, deployed in 1990.

The $75 million "wide field camera 3" is expected to help Hubble better look deep into the universe.

The $70 million "cosmic origins spectrograph" is expected to help scientists understand how galaxies, stars and planets evolved.

Scientists and engineers at the University of Colorado designed the spectrograph.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County holds the contract to operate Hubble and to oversee the service and repair mission.

Lockheed Martin employees are performing much of the work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

When the service mission is done, Ball Aerospace engineers will have built all five scientific instruments on Hubble. In all, employees at the Boulder company have built seven Hubble instruments.

Ball Aerospace astronomer Harold Reitsema told a news briefing that hundreds of company employees have had a hand in Hubble - including as many as 500 at one time.

"Ball has been involved with Hubble since the very beginning," he said.

In addition to installing the new camera and spectrograph, shuttle astronauts are scheduled to install six batteries, six gyroscopes and a guidance sensor.

The two scientific instruments and the new gear total some $200 million.

Also, shuttle astronauts are scheduled to repair two existing scientific instruments aboard Hubble that Ball Aerospace built: the "space telescope imaging spectrograph" and the "advanced camera for surveys."

Ball Aerospace said its engineers and others have spent more than six months producing the tool parts that astronauts will use during their five space walks.

The company has shipped several fully assembled tools and 1,500 tool parts.

The October mission represents Hubble's fifth service and repair mission. The last occurred in March 2002.

The latest mission had been postponed after the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster. NASA opted to revive the mission in October 2006.

fillionr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2467

Comments

  • August 22, 2008

    11:09 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Bagel writes:

    I worked on WFC3! It's exciting to see it finally go up.