Alliant Techsystems broke ground yesterday on a 25,000 square foot expansion of the company's facility in Goleta, California. The expanded operations will support NASA's human space flight program, as well as global weather satellites and possible future spacecraft missions.

A number of local and state officials attended the ground breaking, including and Congresswoman Lois Capps, California 23rd District and Goleta Mayor Roger Aceves. Others in attendance included representatives from the California Space Authority, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

The expansion will include a class 100,000 clean room high bay, laboratories and additional office space. The facility currently has 70,000 square feet of production, engineering and office space used primarily to design and build advanced solar arrays and lightweight space deployables.

"This facility expansion will help ATK provide high-quality, innovative products for a growing customer base," said Alan Jones, Vice President solar arrays and deployables, ATK Space Systems.

"We are proud of our contributions to America's space program through the design, development, and production of critically important technologies, as well as the role ATK's 175 Goleta employees play in Goleta's Old Town Redevelopment."

The upgraded facility will allow ATK to continue to support critical national space programs with products like ATK's UltraFlex solar arrays. These 18-foot diameter solar arrays will provide power to NASA's Orion crew exploration vehicle on its missions to low-Earth orbit, the moon and other destinations.

Innovative design features make ATK's UltraFlex arrays ultra-lightweight while providing high strength and stiffness, as well as compact stowage volume. ATK is providing UltraFlex solar arrays for Orion through NASA's prime contractor for the spacecraft, Lockheed Martin.

The expansion will also assist ATK as it produces large solar arrays for a series of four National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) spacecraft being developed by Northrop Grumman.

NPOESS is the next generation of low earth orbiting environmental satellites. They will circle the Earth approximately once every 100 minutes. During these rotations, the NPOESS will be providing global coverage, monitoring environmental conditions, collecting, disseminating and processing data about the Earth's weather, atmosphere, oceans, land, and near-space environment.