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The European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications or ECSAT is a research center belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA) and located in the Harwell Science, Innovation and Business Campus in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.
It was created in 2009 and developed by ESA according to agreements between the agency and the United Kingdom in 2012. About 100 ESA employees were expected to work in Harwell by 2015. They would support activities linking space to telecommunications, integrated applications, climate change, technology and science. A new ESA-only building, which would include advanced concepts on sustainability and use of natural energy sources, would be constructed on the campus.
The development of ECSAT was in line with the growing efforts of the United Kingdom in the space sector, including the creation of the UK Space Agency (2010) and the important increase in the economic contribution of that country to the ESA. At the same time, the ESA benefited from a closer relation with the UK space sector and corrected an historical anomaly whereby the United Kingdom, being one of the biggest ESA contributors, did not host any agency’s major centers.
There is also another ESA facility already existing on the campus, the ESA Business Incubation Centre (BIC) Harwell, which is intended to assist on the development of technology transfer ideas helping to transform them in real projects and viable business.