The Westcott-based UK arm of the Norwegian group Nammo, which makes rocket engines and thrusters for satellites and space probes and runs the UK's national propulsion test facility.
Nammo UK, at Westcott Venture Park near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, designs, builds and tests spacecraft propulsion. It describes itself as one of the leading providers of spacecraft propulsion solutions, for missions in Earth orbit, to the Moon and across the solar system. Its products include the LEROS family of rocket engines, small thrusters, fluid valves and monopropellant propulsion systems. LEROS engines have flown on more than 90 missions in their apogee engine form, which is the engine that puts a satellite into its final orbit. They have also helped carry NASA's Juno spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter and supported the Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids. Its LEROS 4 engine did the descent burn for Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander.
The Westcott site has a long history. It began in 1946 as the Rocket Projectile Establishment and developed solid, liquid and gaseous rocket engines. It began making spacecraft engines in the mid-1990s. In 2012 Moog bought the business, then known as AMPAC In-Space Propulsion, and Nammo acquired it in 2017. ACQUIRED: by Nammo (2017); it still operates at Westcott under the Nammo name. Nammo is headquartered in Raufoss, Norway. The Westcott pages we read give no values statement beyond the description of its work, and the company keeps most production in-house to shorten lead times.
Nammo UK's home is Westcott Venture Park, where it has worked for about 70 years according to a 2022 article. That year it signed a 15-year lease on a building of 18,200 square feet that was to become its UK headquarters, with laboratories, offices and clean rooms. The site has test areas including miniHATF for small thrusters and sea-level and vacuum firing sites. Nammo also operates the National Space Propulsion Test Facility on behalf of the UK Space Agency, and an engine called RELIANCE for the European Large Logistics Lander (Argonaut) has been tested there since May 2024. The wider Nammo group had over 2,700 staff across 28 sites in 12 countries in 2022.
On people, Adam Watts, of Nammo Space, said in 2022 that the test facility was helping win projects and that many major American players were now buying rocket engines from the UK team. Nigel MacKenzie, a development manager, described Nammo as central to Westcott's propulsion community. The local enterprise partnership's chief executive called Westcott a globally leading centre of excellence in space propulsion. We found no formal description of company culture.
A propulsion site like this needs design engineers for engines and thrusters, test engineers who run hot-fire tests, technicians who assemble and inspect hardware, project managers, supply chain and quality staff, and business development. Engineering, physics and chemistry degrees are typical, but so is technical work in manufacturing and testing. Westcott also hosts other propulsion firms, so it is a good place for building a career in the field.
Website: www.nammo.com
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