WASHINGTON — Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has appointed Debra Facktor Lepore to the newly created position of vice president and general manager of Washington operations, effective Jan. 15, the Boulder, Colo.-based company said in a Jan. 24 press release.

Lepore will run Ball Aerospace’s Washington office and be responsible for overseeing corporate communications and strategic planning, the company said. She will report directly to Ball Aerospace President and Chief Executive David L. Taylor.

Taylor had been running the Washington office on an acting basis for the past two years, Ball Aerospace spokeswoman Roz Brown said.

An engineer by training, Lepore previously held high-profile positions including president of AirLaunch LLC and vice president of business development and strategic planning at Kistler Aerospace, a pair of companies that tried unsuccessfully to develop low-cost launchers. More recently she had her own consulting firm, DFL Space LLC, while serving as a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.

“Ball Aerospace continues to increase its position in the market and its presence in the Washington, DC area,” Taylor said in a prepared statement. “The hiring of Debra Facktor Lepore is a key part of that strategy.”

Warren Ferster is the Editor-in-Chief of SpaceNews and is responsible for all the news and editorial coverage in the weekly newspaper, the spacenews.com Web site and variety of specialty publications such as show dailies. He manages a staff of seven reporters...