Ball Aerospace Celebrates 45th Anniversary.

Business Editors

BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 17, 2001

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is celebrating its 45th anniversary.

The company, which opened its doors in 1956 and was known then as Ball Brothers Research Corporation, has been a major contributor to the aerospace industry and has maintained a long association with NASA for civil programs and with various U.S. military branches for defense programs.

In 1956, the neophyte company began with seven employees, most of whom were from the University of Colorado in Boulder. One building, with a gravel driveway, standing isolated on east Arapahoe Avenue, constituted Ball's facilities. Now, although still headquartered in Boulder, the company also has Colorado facilities in Broomfield, Westminster, and Colorado Springs, with a total square footage of nearly 1.2 million. The company also has outlying offices nationwide and in Australia and New Zealand.

Ball Aerospace is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation, one of the word's leading suppliers of metal and plastic packaging to the food and beverage industries, headquartered in Broomfield. The association of these two companies led to the slogan, "from fruit jars to satellites," which captured the public's imagination for many years.

Ball Aerospace has the distinction of building NASA's second science satellite, the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO). Launched in 1962, this satellite was the first of seven OSOs that Ball Aerospace built for NASA. OSO, the first spacecraft built by Ball Aerospace, featured a dual-spin design permitting various instruments of the payload to be pointed accurately at the sun while others scanned the galaxy for scientific data. The object was to return data on the ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma ray emissions of the sun and galaxy. Although OSO-1's mission was scheduled for only six months, the satellite orbited for nearly 20 years.

The reputation for the quality and reliability of Ball Aerospace's work resulted in the company being selected as the prime contractor to correct the Hubble Space Telescope's faulty mirror, built by another manufacturer, after its launch in 1990. In its 1993 servicing mission, the Hubble's axial instruments received their Ball Aerospace-built Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), the "eyeglasses for Hubble." By its final servicing mission, seven of Hubble's instruments will have been designed and built by Ball Aerospace.

The company's legacy also includes extensive defense contracts. As part of the U.S. government's Strategic Defense Initiative, Ball Aerospace pushed the state of the art in the area of laser pointing on orbit with its Relay Mirror Experiment, launched in 1990. The experiment directed a 1.065-micron laser beam from a ground site to an orbiting mirror and then to a ground-based cooperative target. In more than 60 beam bouncing engagements, the whole system, once calibrated, would point the reflected laser beam 10 times as accurately as the Air Force had originally requested.

Ball Aerospace's contributions to aerospace also include inventing lubrication technology, VacKote, to allow space hardware's moving components to operate within the extreme conditions of the space environment. The company also built the instruments that monitor the ozone hole above Antarctica, the antenna equipment in the astronauts' backpacks, and every space shuttle is equipped with Ball Aerospace star trackers, cryogenic tanks and actuators.

Looking toward the future, Ball Aerospace is the prime contractor for the NASA/Goddard Deep Impact mission, designed to fire a 1,100-pound projectile into the Comet Tempel 1 in order to study comet formations and their links to the origin of our solar system. Deep Impact is scheduled for launch in 2004, with the comet impact set to occur July 4, 2005. Ball Aerospace is also actively involved in NASA's Mars missions and the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).

Additionally, the company builds commercial spacecraft and is slated to launch QuickBird 2 in October for EarthWatch Incorporated, followed by the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) for NASA. The company also builds antennas and cameras for military applications and provides systems engineering services to a wide variety of customers.

To celebrate its 45 years in aerospace, the company will hold a party for its employees and retirees this week in Boulder and in other Ball Aerospace sites in subsequent weeks. Events in Boulder include a vintage car show of employee-owned vehicles, performances by Ball-employee bands and a picnic.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. provides imaging and communications products for commercial and government customers worldwide and is a subsidiary of Ball Corporation (NYSE:BLL), a Fortune 500 company which had sales of $3.7 billion in 2000.

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 16, 2001, for a summary of key risk factors that could affect actual results or outcomes. Key risk factors may include, but are not limited to, industry capacity and competitive activity, authorization, funding and availability of government contracts, technical uncertainty, customer demand, and U.S. and foreign economic conditions.

Note to Editors: Electronic images available at http://www.ball.com/aerospace/media/nr07_17_01.html.