SSTL's facilities are located on four sites in south east England and provide all the facilities necessary for the company's vertically integrated operation - from satellite and payload design, through to manufacturing, test and post-launch operations.

Headquarters and Mission Control Centre

Tycho House is located on the Surrey Research Park in Guildford and accommodates the company's mission analysis, engineering, project management, operations and administration teams.


In-orbit operations are performed by SSTL from its Mission Control Centre at Tycho House. The automated centre is linked by high-speed connections to the internet enabling the control of its spacecraft from other SSTL-equipped ground stations across the world. Whilst many SSTL customers control their own missions from SSTL supplied ground stations, our facility is always available for back-up operational support.





Tycho House contact & location details 
 

Manufacturing, Integration and Test Facilities

SSTL cleanrooms, test facilities and laboratories are located in our technical facility, The Kepler Building, adjacent to Tycho House on the Surrey Research Park. The 3,700sqm (40,000 sqft) facility provides world class test halls providing two 125 cubic metre walk-in thermal chambers, a seismic test platform, 15,000kg and 3,200kg monorail cranes, 10,000kg and 8,000kg gantry cranes and reinforced floors, providing the greatest flexibility for integration and testing of both small and larger spacecraft.

See inside.... 

The Kepler Building: BREEAM Man9 document 

Optics Facility

SSTL's Optical Payload Group is located at Rayleigh House in Sevenoaks, Kent and accommodates 30 specialist optics engineers. Rayleigh House is equipped with: a suite of Class 1000 and Class 100 clean rooms; laboratories for detector evaluation and electronics development; precision workshop equipped with CNC and manual machines; vibration and thermal vacuum test equipment; co-ordinate measuring machines; interferometers and purpose-built equipment for testing optical instruments.

Optics Facility contact and location details 

 

Composites Facility

SSTL has a dedicated composites facility at Bordon, Hampshire. The facility's primary function is the manufacture of composite components and structures and features a climate-conrolled Lay-up Room, Processing Area, dedicated Surface Preparation Area and a Trimming and Finishing facility. Equipment installed includes a Large Processing Oven, Vapour Degreasing Tank, 'Vapormaster' Shot Blast Cabinet, Walk-in Freezer and early in 2010 a composites curing Autoclave will be commissioned.

 Composites Facility contact and location details