NASA Deputy Administrator Visits Interns From Ball Aerospace And United Launch Alliance In Colorado

Sarah Ramsey

Headquarters, Washington                                   

 

Roz Brown

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

 

Chris Chavez

United Launch Alliance, Denver

 

Companies Give Interns Hands-On Experience For Jobs Of The Future

WASHINGTON -- NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will visit Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., on Tuesday, July 26, to meet with summer interns from Ball and United Launch Alliance (ULA). Garver will view demonstrations of student-built rockets and payloads and discuss how hands-on experience for students is critical to developing experience for science and technology-related jobs of the future.

Reporters are invited to attend the demonstration and speak with Garver at 2:30 p.m. PDT on Tuesday. Those wishing to attend should contact Roz Brown at 303-533-6059 or rbrown@ball.com to be badged and escorted to the event’s location.

Over the last seven weeks, more than 100 high school and college interns built the high-power rockets and a variety of multi-faceted payloads as part of their experience at the two companies. This is the third year the Ball Intern Rocket Scientist Team (BIRST) has partnered with ULA to offer students a chance to work through an entire program’s life cycle from design to launch. The students will launch six student-built rockets with 20 payloads on July 30. Four of those payloads were built by the BIRST participants.

All the rockets were built by ULA summer interns -- dubbed SPIRIT (Sky Piercing Intern Rock-It Team) -- in Denver, Decatur, Ala., Harlingen, Texas, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and Cape Canaveral, Fla. This is the fourth year ULA interns have built and launched high-power rockets as a summer project.

Ball Aerospace works with NASA on many critical science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope and the NPOESS Preparatory Project satellite, scheduled to launch on Oct. 25. United Launch Alliance partners with NASA to launch payloads to space, including the Aug. 5 launch of the Juno mission to Jupiter. ULA and NASA recently signed a new agreement to share data on the potential for human rating a ULA Atlas V launch vehicle as part of the Commercial Crew Development program.

For information on the United Launch Alliance, visit http://www.ulalaunch.com.

For more information about Ball, visit http://www.ballaerospace.com.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit http://www.nasa.gov.

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