BOULDER - Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has signed a contract with the nonprofit B612 Foundation to build infrared imaging sensors for the Sentinel Mission satellite, the company announced Tuesday. The mission's goal is to protect Earth by providing early warning of threatening asteroids.

The Sentinel Mission will create a comprehensive and dynamic map of the inner solar system to catalog 90 percent of the asteroids larger than 140 meters in Earth's region of the solar system, a press release from Ball Aerospace said. The map will track asteroids' paths during the next 100 years to provide advance warning of a collision.

Sentinel will take approximately five years to complete development and testing, to be ready for launch in 2017 or 2018.

The B612 Foundation is a privately funded organization based in Mountain View, California.

"Ball was our first and only choice as the major contractor for Sentinel," said Ed Lu, chairman of the B612 Foundation. "The company is a pioneer in space observatories with a track record of excellence spanning more than 55 years. We are thrilled to have them as our partner."

Ball Aerospace is a unit of Broomfield-based Ball Corp. (NYSE: BLL).