Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been selected as part of a team to build NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, formerly known as Next Generation Space Telescope.

Ball Aerospace, under contract to TRW Inc., is responsible for the telescope's sophisticated mirror system designed to operate in the infrared and to study emissions from objects that formed when the universe was just beginning.

Plans for James Webb Space Telescope, a Hubble Space Telescope follow-on mission, were motivated by continued interest in the formation of stars and galaxies in the early history of our universe.

"This is an exciting contract win for Ball Aerospace," said David Taylor, president and CEO of Ball Aerospace. "It continues the legacy of Hubble, yet enables a much larger class of space observatory."

Scheduled for launch in 2010, James Webb Space Telescope is designed to be capable of studying objects up to 400 times more faint than current ground- and space-based telescopes with acuity that matches that of Hubble.

Ball Aerospace has played a pivotal role in all four of NASA's Great Observatories, a series of orbiting telescopes that NASA began building in the 1980s as a way of seeing the cosmos at all wavelength bands.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. provides imaging and communications products for commercial and government customers worldwide and is a subsidiary of Ball Corporation , a Fortune 500 company which had sales of $3.7 billion in 2001.

Forward-Looking Statements:

The information in this news release may contain forward-looking statements. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Please refer to the Form 10-Q filed by Ball Corporation on May 15, 2002, for a summary of the key risk factors that could affect actual results or outcomes. Key risk factors may include, but are not limited to authorization, funding and availability of government contracts, technical uncertainty, weather, terrorist activities or war, customer demand, and U.S. and foreign economic conditions.

MAKE YOUR OPINION COUNT - Click Here
http://tbutton.prnewswire.com/prn/11690X86712935

SOURCE: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.