Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation Essay -- Business, Aerospa

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation is a leading provider of Aerospace hardware. They specialize in the design and development in imaging and precision attitude control. Ball Aerospace and DigitalGlobe have been working together since the mid 90’s and Ball has been a key partner in meeting the increased demand for earth imaging and enhancing the geospatial information market. With the success of QuickBird, which was launched in 2001, images as small as 2 feet can be identified. Because of this, the two Companies merged their technologies and started working towards higher resolution capabilities in the aerospace industry. That is how WorldView 1 and WorldView 2 were designed and built. They launched in 2007 and 2009 respectively and are currently in a low earth orbit. Once again DigitalGlobe will be the customer for an additional WorldView (3) , which was awarded to Ball Aerospace and ITT in August of 2010 and the expectations of the satellite are much greater th an the previous two WorldView spacecrafts (De Selding, 2010). Ball is currently in the production phase of WorldView 3, which has an anticipated launch date of 2014-2015. Once complete, it will have the highest resolution camera on a remote sensing satellite in the commercial sector. WorldView 3 is expected to provide DigitalGlobe with higher resolution images much quicker than WorldView 1 or 2. This can be largely attributed to emerging technology and modifications made to the two previous WorldView satellite designs. With minimal changes in design, WorldView 3 can provide images to several government and commercial customers to help with things such as: national defense, land mapping and natural relief. After WorldView 1 was launched in 2007, it ... ...e imagery and also national defense purposes. The impact of all three WorldView satellites has been phenomenal to satellite technologies around the world. Arial views of the earth have come to great lengths in providing customers with fast, clear images. WorldView 1 and 2 has been able to provide commercial businesses and the government with a new technology that can capture images very close to the ground and with high resolution. The demand for the high resolution imagery is so great; DigitalGlobe is already in preliminary discussions about adding a fourth satellite (WorldView 4) to its constellation. The remote sensing spacecraft industry will continue to be an emerging technology for years to come. I would venture to say the aerospace industry in general could also be viewed as an emerging technology as competition in the industry continues to grow.