One major part of spacecraft technologies is attitude determination and control systems (ADCS). These systems allow satellites to determine in what direction they are pointing relative to where they need to be pointing, and then taking action to point in that direction. For example, the first satellite SDSL worked on was the SDS-1. Its mission was to find the Sun and take pictures of solar flares. In order to find the Sun, SDS-1 used light sensitive sensors to determine which direction the light was coming from. Then it used reaction wheels and torque rods to move itself to face that direction.
Here is a video of the legacy ADCS test bed spherical air bearing that was machined in-house:
Erik Favreau (efavreau