One of the largest industrial spaces planned for the Goleta area in recent years will soon break ground.

Alliant Techsystems Space Systems plans to move the first dirt for a new 25,000-square-foot facility on Pine Avenue on Oct. 12, the company said in a release. Better known in the Tri-Counties as ATK Space Systems, the firm makes solar arrays for spacecraft at its facility in Goleta.

The new building will house the manufacturing of solar devices for NASA’s efforts to further explore the moon and for global weather forecasting satellites, ATK said in a release.

Through a subcontract with Lockheed Martin, ATK is supplying the 18-foot-diameter solar arrays to NASA’s Orion Spacecraft on its mission to the moon. The ATK division is also working with Northrop Grumman to supply solar panels to the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System.

The building is next to ATK’s existing site in Old Town Goleta. The general contractor on the new building is the Santa Barbara-based Towbes Group.

Congresswoman Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, along with officials from NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the California Space Authority are slated to be on hand for the groundbreaking ceremony.

ATK Space Systems is a division of Alliant Techsystems, a nationwide defense contractor that supplies much of the U.S. military’s ammunition and recently landed a $49 million missile-warning-system contract. The stock was down three quarters of a percent to $77.13 in midday trading Oct. 7.

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