USAF contracts Ball Aerospace for risk reduction service on Weather Satellite Follow-on program

Ball Aerospace and Technologies has been chosen by the U.S Air force to provide risk reduction services on its next-gen of microwave sounding and imaging instruments for the Weather Satellite Follow-on program.

Under the terms of agreement, Ball Aerospace will examine and present the best measures to achieve the requirements of DND for measuring soil moisture and ocean surface vector winds using a microwave instrument tailor fitted for small, low-cost launch vehicles. This effort shares a heritage with the Global Precipitation Monitoring Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument, a machine that was also built by Ball Aerospace and delivered to NASA for the Global Precipitation Measurement mission.

Aside from GMI and microwave instruments, Ball Aerospace is also known for building the satellite bus and Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) instrument for the Suomi National Polar-orbiting satellite -- NOAA’s newest polar-orbiting satellite. Presently, the company is also working on the satellite bus and additional copy of OMPS for NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System.

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