Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large telecommunications site located on Goonhilly Downs

Goonhilly Downs

Goonhilly Downs is a Site of Special Scientific Interest that forms a raised plateau in the central western area of the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, England, UK. Situated just south of Helston and the Naval Air Station at Culdrose, it is famous for its Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station, the...

 near Helston

Helston

Helston is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula approximately 12 miles east of Penzance and nine miles southwest of Falmouth. Helston is the most southerly town in the UK and is around further south than...

 on the Lizard peninsula

The Lizard

The Lizard is a peninsula in south Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The most southerly point of the British mainland is near Lizard Point at ....

 in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, England, UK. Owned by BT Group plc, it was at one time the largest satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

 earth station

Earth station

A ground station, earth station, or earth terminal is a terrestrial terminal station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft, and/or reception of radio waves from an astronomical radio source. Ground stations are located either on the surface of the Earth, or within Earth's...

 in the world, with more than 25 communications dishes in use and over 60 in total. The site also links into undersea cable lines

Transatlantic telephone cable

A transatlantic telecommunications cable is a submarine communications cable running under the Atlantic Ocean. All modern cables use fibre optic technology....

.

History

Its first dish, Antenna One (dubbed "Arthur"), was built in 1962 to link with Telstar

Telstar

Telstar is the name of various communications satellites, including the first such satellite to relay television signals.The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962...

. It was the first open parabolic design

Parabolic antenna

A parabolic antenna is an antenna that uses a parabolic reflector, a curved surface with the cross-sectional shape of a parabola, to direct the radio waves. The most common form is shaped like a dish and is popularly called a dish antenna or parabolic dish...

 and is 25.9 metres in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonne

Tonne

The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...

s. Arthur received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite on July 11, 1962. It is now a Grade II listed structure and is therefore protected.

The site has also played a key role in communications events such as the Muhammad Ali fights, the Olympic Games, the 1969 moon landings and 1985's Live Aid concert.

Statistics

The site's largest dish, dubbed "Merlin", has a diameter of 32 metres. Other dishes include Guinevere

Guinevere

Guinevere was the legendary queen consort of King Arthur. In tales and folklore, she was said to have had a love affair with Arthur's chief knight Sir Lancelot...

, Tristan

Tristan

Tristan is one of the main characters of the Tristan and Iseult story, a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table featuring in the Matter of Britain...

 and Isolde after characters in Arthurian

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

 legend, much of which takes place in Cornwall.

The earth station is powered by the national grid. If power fails, all essential equipment will run off huge batteries for 20 seconds, during which time four one-megawatt diesel generators will take over. The nearby wind generator

Wind generator

A wind generator is a device that generates electrical power from wind energy.Wind generators have traditionally been wind turbines, i.e. a propeller attached to an electric generator attached to appropriate electronics to attach it to the electrical grid or to charge batteries.Recently, however, a...

 farm is not part of the complex.

Closure

On 12 September 2006, BT announced it would shut down satellite operations at Goonhilly in 2008, and move them to Madley Communications Centre

Madley Communications Centre

Madley Communications Centre is British Telecom's earth satellite tracking station, between Madley and Kingstone, Herefordshire, England. It claims to be the largest earth station in the world.-Earth position:...

 in Herefordshire

Herefordshire

Herefordshire is a historic and ceremonial county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire" NUTS 2 region. It also forms a unitary district known as the...

, making that centre BT's only earth station and the biggest in the world.

Visitor Centre

Until Easter 2010 the site had a visitor centre inside which the Connected Earth

Connected Earth

Connected Earth is a UK network of organisations, primarily museums, that preserve the history of telecommunications in the UK. Heritage artefacts are physically dispersed to Connected Earth partners and other institutions as appropriate, and are brought together again online through virtual...

 gallery told the history of satellite communications. There were many other interactive exhibits, a cafe, a shop and one of Britain's fastest cybercafés (a one gigabit pipe and a theoretical maximum speed per iMac of 100 Mbit). There were also tours around the main BT site and into the heart of Arthur.

At its prime, the site attracted around 80,000 visitors a year, but in March 2010 BT announced that the visitor centre would be "Closed for Easter and beyond until further notice."

Future

On 11th January 2011 it was announced that part of the site is to be sold to create a space science centre. This will involve upgrading some of the dishes to make them suitable for "deep space communication with spacecraft missions". A new company has been formed to manage the operations, Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. The company will lease most of the antennas for at least three years with the option to buy the entire complex in the future.

There are also plans to upgrade the former visitor centre into "an outreach centre promoting space and space science for visitors, including local residents and schools".

External links

• Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station The official BT Goonhilly site.
• Goonhilly Gallery Photos in and around Goonhilly.