In the past 70 years, research in space science has blossomed from early rocketry into a dizzying array of different disciplines, spanning instrumentation to modelling to processing vast quantities of data. Space history is a growing field, comprising memoirs and reflections from scientists, oral histories of science and engineering, explorations of scientific instruments held in museums, at research institutions and at launch sites, and documentary records such as scientific papers and meeting minutes.

Many histories of space science centre on the United States, Russia, or Europe; few deal specifically with UK space science. My research addresses this by investigating the social and cultural history of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL), the oldest and largest space science research school in the UK. MSSL primarily produces ‘space hardware’ – scientific instruments that are launched on rockets and satellites, while also producing identical ‘flight spares’ that remain at MSSL under controlled conditions.

Scientific papers do not and cannot tell the whole story of how science is done. Neither do meeting minutes. Memoirs can address some of the story, but not all. As such, the documentary record leaves many gaps. The pieces of space hardware themselves – the things that people build to produce scientific knowledge – are key to understanding how science is done, but are ‘mute’ and require interpretation from historians, engineers and scientists. Combining documentary records and material culture with oral history, as I do in my research, allows me to answer my first research question of understanding the scientific and cultural norms at MSSL.

My second research question is how scientific and cultural norms at MSSL become embodied in the space hardware produced by MSSL. If space hardware is like other instruments and objects made by people, it should be able to tell historians more about how people at MSSL think, feel and act, and how they perceive their interactions with space hardware. I address this question by combining oral testimony about space hardware with physical examinations of the space hardware, either at MSSL or at SMG.

I conclude by reflecting on how combining oral history and material culture approaches can address gaps in our understanding of how space science is done, particularly in the UK. I ground my conclusions within the context of MSSL being one singular research school within UK space science. By combining oral history and material culture approaches, I can address gaps in research about UK space history and highlight the importance of preserving space hardware built in the UK. My thesis can therefore be a starting point for future research into social and cultural norms in space science, and how these might be embodied in scientific objects.