Harwell campus enjoys exciting year of growth

This has advanced Harwell’s ambitious plan to consolidate its position as a key driver of cutting-edge research and development in Europe.

Harwell Science and Innovation Campus is home to a rapidly expanding community of more than 200 public, private, and academic enterprises, employing some 6000 people.

ESA’s European Centre for Telecommunications and Integrated Applications (ECSAT) is an important part of this community.

The campus – which includes state-of-the-art facilities, office spaces, and other amenities – employs a cross-disciplinary approach that accelerates innovation by promoting collaboration between experts working in different fields.

This vibrant network includes clusters focused on energy, space, health and quantum computing.

To accommodate the increasing number of organisations relocating to Harwell and the growth of ones already based there, the campus is forging ahead with an ambitious development plan.

This year Harwell campus opened the Zeus and BEP0 research, development and advanced manufacturing buildings, as well as Quad Two, which is a high-grade office space that serves as the new campus headquarters.

ESA’s most recent contribution to campus is its 5G/6G Hub, an innovation and research centre that is promoting the development and deployment of next-generation, space-enabled connectivity.

Since its launch in February this year, the Hub has been working with companies from Harwell and beyond to advance the development of digital technologies in a future 5G environment.

This November the 5G/6G Hub team created a space-empowered metaverse to enable ESA’s staff to experience the COP27 climate summit without the environmental cost of travelling.

During 2022 ESA continued the construction of its state-of-the-art ECSAT conference centre, which is due to open its doors in early 2023.

This facility will showcase the global impact of European space activities. 

Serving as a focal point for collaboration on campus and beyond, it will host organisations from across Harwell, as well as other national and international partners.

These new additions further ECSAT’s role as a key facilitator of activities at Harwell.

The facility serves as the headquarters of ESA’s telecommunications directorate, but it is also home to teams from other directorates, including human and robotic exploration, Earth observation and commercialisation.

ECSAT hosts facilities on the surrounding campus, such as the Sample Analogue Curation Facility, the ESA-RAL Advanced Manufacturing Lab and the Harwell hub of ESA’s business incubation centre.

From ECSAT, ESA has forged strong collaborations with organisations across campus.

These include space debris removal company Astroscale, which recently scaled up its Harwell presence by relocating to the new Zeus building, and Darwin Innovation Group, which is currently operating a driverless shuttle service at Harwell as part of an ESA-backed project.

In September, this shuttle spent ten days in Oxford to demonstrate how autonomous public transport can coexist with live traffic in a busy city.

Other ESA partner organisations present on campus include Thales Alenia Space UK, Oxford Space Systems, Open Cosmos, MDA, Magdrive and many more.