Ball Aerospace has opened a new facility for developing spacecraft payloads in Broomfield Colorado, and is on target to complete work on an expansion to its factory in nearby Westminster before the end of this year.
Attached to the existing Broomfield R&D building, Ball’s Payload Development Facility (PDF) adds 160,000 square feet of additional offices, cleanroom space, advanced integration and test areas, and a mission support center that will provide post-launch support for a variety of programs.
Meanwhile, when completed the expansion of its Aerospace Manufacturing Center (AMC) in Westminster will add around 122,000 square feet to that facility, bringing the building total to more than 490,000 square feet.
The AMC’s expansion will significantly enhance its capabilities to develop and produce tactical mission systems for government and commercial customers, said Ball Aerospace. This most recent addition to the AMC campus comes after the completion of a 146,000 square-foot expansion of the facility in 2019, the addition of a new Compact Range testing facility, and 12,500 square-foot highbay completed in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
“Ball Aerospace has experienced tremendous business growth in recent years, which has allowed us the opportunity to add more people to our team and more space to meet the needs of our customers,” said Dave Kaufman, president of Ball Aerospace. “Throughout this period of growth, we have been committed to nurturing a strong culture of innovation and inclusiveness that makes Ball unique. A big part of that culture is collaboration, and these new facilities, combined with the increasing number of our team members returning to the office regularly, will be vital to fostering that culture.”
Ball Aerospace has grown to consist of over 5,400 team members, up from almost 2,700 just five years ago. Most work in Colorado, but the company is adding employees across the USA in Ohio, New Mexico, Maryland, Virginia as well as other locations. According to the company it is seeing growth in military aerospace and space programs for mobile connectivity and persistent imaging.
Recently, the company was selected to design a prototype multi-band, low-observable satellite communications antenna to be installed on the US Navy’s newest stealth destroyers. Ball Aerospace is also building an operational weather satellite that will provide critical and actionable environmental intelligence to military operations in all warfighting domains.
