The first ESA Director General Roy Gibson spoke at the flag-raising ceremony of ESA's European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT) in the UK on 9 July 2015. The new ECSAT building is named after him, and he expressed his thanks for the gesture while encouraging the ESA-UK relationship to continue growing.

ECSAT is the youngest of ESA's centres across Europe, and has a special focus on telecom and partnerships with industry. One hundred ECSAT staff and contractors will be housed in the brand new "Roy Gibson" building on Harwell Campus, the UK Space Gateway, by the end of 2015.

Over two hundred space industry leaders from all over Europe joined the raising of ESA's Member State flags at ECSAT on 9 July.