Getting your player ready...
Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. lost out to the Boeing Co. for a prestigious NASA contract to build the avionics system for the Ares I rocket that will launch the Orion crew exploration vehicle, the successor to the space shuttle.
The initial contract is worth about $265 million.
Ball Aerospace had opened a Huntsville, Ala., office to pursue the contract and had planned to open a conference center there. It will probably keep the office open but pull back from the conference center plans, according to Bill Townsend, Ball Aerospace’s vice president for exploration systems.
