DigitalGlobe and Ball Aerospace Successfully Complete Critical Design Review for WorldView-3

BOULDER, Colo. (Oct. 3, 2011) – DigitalGlobe, a leading global provider of high-resolution earth imagery solutions, and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. jointly announced today they successfully completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for DigitalGlobe’s next generation remote-sensing satellite, WorldView-3. The successful CDR was completed in late August and keeps WorldView-3 on schedule for a planned launch in the middle of 2014. WorldView-3 will expand DigitalGlobe’s orbiting constellation to four remote-sensing satellites, all of which were manufactured by Ball Aerospace.

“As they have so many times in the past, Ball continues to impress us with their consistent professionalism and highly effective execution,” said Walter Scott, executive vice president and chief technical officer. “Having built WorldView-2, WorldView-1, and QuickBird, Ball has amassed an unmatched level of knowledge and experience. This ultimately results in lower risk and higher efficiency in the design and manufacture of WorldView-3, keeping us consistently on-plan and on-schedule for a mid-2014 launch.”

The CDR verified design modifications between WorldView-3 and WorldView-2, previously built by Ball for DigitalGlobe. This included validation of cost and schedule documentation and verification of test requirements that will allow Ball Aerospace to proceed into the final manufacturing, integration and the testing phase of the program.

“The successful CDR puts us on the path to bus integration in mid- to late-2012 followed by instrument integration in 2013,” said Cary Ludtke, vice president of Ball’s Civil and Operational Space business unit. “Our mission success with DigitalGlobe is built on our proven spacecraft bus and schedule performance.”

Ball Aerospace is providing the BCP 5000 for WorldView-3 and will integrate the remote-sensing instrument onto the spacecraft bus leading to system testing. The BCP 5000’s power, stability, agility, and data storage and transmission capability, together meet the requirements to deliver comprehensive Earth remote-sensing information.

The advanced Control Moment Gyroscopes provided for all the WorldView satellites afford the flexibility and agility to capture more imagery than ever before. Ball Aerospace previously built the trio of DigitalGlobe satellites currently on orbit including WorldView-2 launched in 2009, WorldView-1 launched in 2007, and QuickBird launched in 2001.

About DigitalGlobe DigitalGlobe is a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery products and services. Sourced from our own advanced satellite constellation, our imagery solutions support a wide variety of uses within defense and intelligence, civil agencies, mapping and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, Internet portals and navigation technology. With our collection sources and comprehensive ImageLibrary (containing more than one billion square kilometers of earth imagery and imagery products) we offer a range of on- and off-line products and services designed to enable customers to easily access and integrate our imagery into their business operations and applications. For more information, visit www.digitalglobe.com .

About Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. supports critical missions of important national agencies such as the Department of Defense, NASA, NOAA and other U.S. government and commercial entities. The company develops and manufactures spacecraft, advanced instruments and sensors, components, data exploitation systems and RF solutions for strategic, tactical and scientific applications. For more information visit www.ballaerospace.com .

About Ball Corporation Ball Corporation /quotes/zigman/219166/quotes/nls/bll BLL +0.03% is a supplier of high quality packaging for beverage, food and household products customers, and of aerospace and other technologies and services, primarily for the U.S. government. Ball Corporation and its subsidiaries employ more than 14,500 people worldwide and reported 2010 sales of more than $7.6 billion. For the latest Ball news and for other company information, please visit http://www.ball.com .

DigitalGlobe is a registered trademark of DigitalGlobe.

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Contact:
Roz Brown
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