Colorado Springs Gazette sheds light on Blue Line's history and accomplishments

On August 11, 2023 the Gazette published an article about Blue Line’s history and our commitment to the success of our Customers’ missions.

Link to the Gazette article

NASA's shares first images and data from the TEMPO environmental monitoring satellite

Imagery from TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) instrument has been released by NASA. This is the first instrument to continuously monitor the air quality over North America from space, and Blue Line’s sensor systems are inside! This capability comes at a critical time as smoke from wildfires in the US and Canada has greatly affected air quility over North America this summer.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-shares-first-images-from-us-pollution-monitoring-instrument

Image Credits: Kel Elkins, Trent Schindler, and Cindy Starr/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Blue Line Engineering Named as CMA's Technology Manufacturer of 2023

On May 12 Blue Line Engineering was named as a Colorado Manufacturing Award’s “Technology Manufacturer of the Year” for 2023. https://coloradomanufacturingawards.com/

Blue Line Engineering a Finalist in the 2023 Colorado Manufacturing Awards.

Blue Line Engineering has been selected as a Finalist in the Technology Manufacturing category in the 2023 Colorado Manufacturing Awards.  Of all the finalists, Blue Line was the only one nominated by one of their customers.

Blue Line Engineering Receives Lockheed Martin Space 2022 Outstanding Small Business Award

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO — Oct. 17, 2022 — Blue Line Engineering announces they have received an Outstanding Small Business Supplier Award for 2022 presented by Lockheed Martin Space Division during an on-line awards ceremony.

Lockheed Martin based their awards on zero defects and on-time delivery. Lockheed Martin Space works with more than 1,000 small business suppliers, including Blue Line Engineering. Blue Line was one of five recipients of this award for 2022.

“The product that you provide … it’s exquisite,” Brian Howley, program manager with Lockheed Martin, said during the presentation. “But it’s also been a great partnership. [Blue Line] took extra steps to ensure that we have early delivery of first-flight hardware coming in for our program, and that was fantastic. You also went above and beyond with making sure that this product exceeded all performance specifications, investing your own time and effort on making sure that some out-of-family characteristics you identified were taken care of, even though it passed spec.”

Blue Line is a world leader in precision sensors and technologies for position measurement and control. Founded in Colorado Springs, Co. in 1994 by Gregory Ames, Blue Line is a certified Veteran-Owned Small Business. Blue Line has delivered sensors for four major optical components on the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope. Three of the mechanisms that required Blue Line’s sensors are part of the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCAM) developed by Lockheed Martin. The fourth mechanism is part of the Fine Steering Mirror developed by Ball Aerospace Corp.

“Blue Line is honored to have been chosen to support the missions and programs of Lockheed Martin and proud to have been chosen as an outstanding Small Business Supplier for 2022,” Ames said. “It’s extremely important to our small but talented team here at Blue Line, especially the project manager, Steve Alltop. We’ve enjoyed working with the team at Lockheed, and essentially they’ve helped bring us to the next level over the years, and we really appreciate that. Blue Line’s entire team is 100% committed to giving our customers the confidence they require when it comes to reliability and outstanding performance.”

Dr. Robert Shivitz, program director with Lockheed Martin, thanked Blue Line for their many years of service. “They provide a very key product to our portfolio in the optical payload center of excellence, delivering to our special programs line of business,” he said. “It’s a very technically challenging product that leads to a very high precision mechanism. With high precision comes a lot of sensitivity, so in delivering such a product comes a close partnership with our technical team here at Lockheed, working through the challenges of delivering it and fine tuning it to meet the mission needs.”

“Blue Line Engineering has been a great partner over the last couple of years,” Shivitz continued. “They have taken on the challenge of being able to turn this product into a standard offering, one that we can have reliable delivery on. In fact, even this year in the last month, they have delivered their first-flight articles to us, which was ahead of schedule by more than a month and a half.”

JWST at L2 Orbit. Comissioning Exceeding Expectations.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was successfully inserted into an L2 orbit 1 Million miles from Earth and has been undergoing an intense multi-month commissioning process. All instruments are functioning well and image quality is exceeding the expectations of the program scientists. See Nasa’s Webb Blog for the most recent updates. Blue Line’s ECSS II Sensor Systems are in 4 different mechanisms on the NICAM instrument aboard the telescope: The Pupil Imaging Lens (PIL, the Filter Wheel Assembly (FWA), the Focus and Alignment Mechanism (FAM). The Fine Steering Mirror (FSM), which is used to point and stabilize the image during science operation also utilizes the ECSS II for position feedback.

“Engineering images of sharply focused stars in the field of view of each instrument demonstrate that the telescope is fully aligned and in focus”

Credit: NASA/STScI