The venue – the ESA Magali Vaissiere Conference Centre – is located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire and is named after the former director of ESA’s telecommunications activities, Magali Vaissiere.
The ESA highlights that Vaissiere presided over the agency’s growing presence at Harwell, with her helping to establish the agency as “a key driver of the cooperative campus ethos”.
It comprises a hall for 300 people and two smaller meeting rooms, as well as breakout areas, rooms for interpreters and catering facilities.
Collaboration
The ESA hopes the facility “will serve as a rallying point for the UK space community, reinforcing existing ties and fostering new partnerships within Europe and beyond”. Its stated aim is to help boost innovation on campus by promoting collaboration between its health, quantum, energy and space clusters.
The ESA’s European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT) is already located at Harwell, in a building named after ESA’s first director general Roy Gibson. As well as being the headquarters of ESA’s Directorate of Connectivity and Secure Communications, it also supports teams working in commercialisation, Earth observation, human and robotic exploration, and space technology, engineering and quality.
Oxfordshire
“The brand new facilities add to ESA’s growing footprint in Oxfordshire, and exemplify our excellent cooperation with the UK, as we work together to advance Europe’s ambitions in space,” said Josef Aschbacher, Director General of ESA.
“Magali has built up ECSAT to a modern centre that combines space technology and business. This conference centre deserved to be named after her.”
The UK Space Agency also welcomed the new facility:
“The new state-of-the art conference centre at ECSAT is a very welcome addition to the world-class science campus at Harwell, offering an attractive base for collaboration and networking between people working in the space sector and beyond,” said the agency’s Chief Executive, Paul Bate.
See also: ESA, UK Space Agency back EnSilica satcom chip for mobile terminals
