Mullard Space Science Laboratory
Coordinates: 51°10′18.6″N 0°25′14.8″W / 51.171833°N 0.420778°W
The UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) is the United Kingdom's largest university space research group. MSSL is the Department of Space and Climate Physics of the University College London. UCL was one of the first universities in the world to conduct space research. Since its establishment, MSSL has participated in 35 satellite missions, 10 of which are currently in operation, and in over 200 sounding rocket experiments.
It takes its name from Mullard Limited, and is located in Holmbury St Mary in the Surrey Hills AONB, near the town of Dorking in the county of Surrey, England.
In 1957 Sir Harrie Massey of UCL directed the first Skylark rocket experiments. In 1962 Massey led a team from UCL, Imperial College London, the University of Birmingham and the University of Leicester that developed many of the instruments on Ariel 1, the world's first multinational spacecraft. By 1966 the demands had outgrown the laboratory space available in London and Massey asked his colleague Robert Boyd to set up a laboratory, with generous funding from the British electronics company Mullard which had helped to set up the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO) at the University of Cambridge.
...
Wikipedia