GOONHILLY SATELLITE EARTH STATION.

Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large telecommunications site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, England. This site is owned by BT Group PLC (British telecommunications). It was once the largest satellite earth station in the world, with more than 25 communication dishes in use and over 60 in total. This site also links to undersea cable lines. The largest dish called Merlin has a diameter of 32 metres. Other dishes are called Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde plus other dishes called after characters in Arthurian legend. Goonhilly`s first dish, antenna one called Arthur was built in 1962 to link with Telstar. It was the first open parabolic design and is 25.9 metres in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonnes. In 2008 satellite operations was shut down and moved to Madley Communications Centre in Herefordshire. The site had a visitors centre which told the history of Satellite Communications. On the site their was a cafe, a shop, interactive exhibits and one of Britain's fastest cybercafes ( 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. The tour of the site was done in a coach, you was not allowed to wander around on your own , there was areas which was classed as top secret. In March of 2010 the visitor centre closed. Their was talks into selling of the site to create a Space Science Centre.

 

One small part of the site.

 

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Arthur (front view).

 

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Arthur (side view).

 

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Arthur with a rainbow.

 

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