Martin Ditter of ESA UK Harwell research centre

Harwell, near Oxford, is one of the UK’s premier hubs for science and technology. For many years the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, it’s now the home of the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the ISIS X-ray source and the Diamond synchrotron light source. It’s also now home to a new European Space Agency (ESA) research facility: the ESA UK Harwell Centre.

The centre is directed by Martin Ditter, a German rocketry engineer. He said: ’There’s enormous potential in the UK space sector, and we at ESA felt that we weren’t connected to it in an optimum fashion. We felt that by being here on-site, we would be able to build the connections we need to bring the competence that exists within the UK into ESA.’

Ditter cites the strength of the commercial space industry in the UK and the UK’s involvement in EADS Astrium as proof of the nation’s potential. ’You have a very strong industry in this region. We felt that in the more institutional sense, which is where ESA operates, we weren’t making the best of it. It’s a case of connecting to the existing space communities and the university research.’