Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station

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Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station
Goonhilly2.jpg
"Merlin", the site's largest dish
Location Goonhilly Downs, Mawgan-in-Meneage, St Martin-in-Meneage, Cury, United Kingdom OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Coordinates 50°02′53″N5°10′55″W / 50.048055555556°N 5.1819444444444°W / 50.048055555556; -5.1819444444444
Website www.goonhilly.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Telescopes
  • Goonhilly Antenna No. 1
  • Goonhilly Antenna No. 2
  • Goonhilly Antenna No. 3
  • Goonhilly Antenna No. 6  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
United Kingdom relief location map.jpg
Red pog.svg
Location of Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station
  Commons-logo.svg Related media on Commons

Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large radiocommunication site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England. Owned by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd [1] under a 999-year lease from BT Group plc, it was at one time the largest satellite earth station in the world, with more than 30 communication antennas and dishes in use. The site also links into undersea cable lines.

Contents

History

Its first dish, Antenna One (dubbed "Arthur"), was built in 1962 to link with Telstar. It was the first open parabolic design and is 25.9 metres (85 feet) in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonnes. After Pleumeur-Bodou Ground Station (Brittany) which received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite at 0H47 GMT on 11 July 1962, Arthur received his first video in the middle of the same day. 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 Apollo 11 Moon landing, and 1985's Live Aid concert. [2]

Statistics

The site's largest dish, dubbed "Merlin", has a diameter of 32 metres (105 feet). Other dishes include Guinevere, Tristan, and Isolde after characters in Arthurian 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 up to 20 minutes, during which time four one-megawatt diesel generators will take over.[ citation needed ] The nearby wind generator 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 in Herefordshire, making that centre BT's only earth station. [3]

Visitor centre

Until Easter 2010 the site had a visitor centre inside which the Connected Earth 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 computer 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." [4]

Development to Commercial Deep Space Communication

On 11 January 2011 it was announced that part of the site was to be sold to create a space science centre. [5] This would involve upgrading some of the dishes to make them suitable for deep space communication with spacecraft missions. A new company was formed to manage the operations, Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. [6] The company leased most of the antennas for at least three years with the option to buy the entire complex in the future. Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. took ownership of the site in January 2014.

There are plans to connect one or more of the Goonhilly dishes into global radio astronomy interferometer networks. [7] [8]

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". [5]

In July 2015 European Space Agency examined if antenna Goonhilly 6 could be used to support Artemis 1 of the Orion spacecraft. [9] Since then the 30 and 32 meter dishes have been refurbished, upgraded, tested and certified as deep space stations and confirm to CCSDS and now can enhance NASA's Deep-Space-Network or ESA's ESTRACK network. The services are offered to NASA, ESA, JAXA, ASI, CNES, CSA, DLR and UKSA.

The site is a partner in the bid by Newquay Airport to become the UK's first Spaceport.

Support for Moon exploration

In April 2018, Goonhilly became part of a collaboration partnership for commercial lunar mission support services, with the European Space Agency and Surrey Satellite Technology. The agreement calls for the upgrade of Goonhilly, and development of the Lunar Pathfinder mission. Plans exist for small landers with a lunar mothership providing communications relay. [10]

On 22 February 2024 the station served as the Earth station for the Intuitive Machines IM-1 spacecraft as it landed on the Moon. The first American spacecraft to do so since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NASA Deep Space Network</span> Network of radio communication facilities run by NASA

The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a worldwide network of spacecraft communication ground segment facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), that supports NASA's interplanetary spacecraft missions. It also performs radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the Solar System and the universe, and supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. DSN is part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex</span> US observatory near Barstow, California

The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC), commonly called the Goldstone Observatory, is a satellite ground station located in Fort Irwin in the U.S. state of California. Operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), its main purpose is to track and communicate with interplanetary space missions. It is named after Goldstone, California, a nearby gold-mining ghost town.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Norcia Station</span> Earth station in Western Australia

New Norcia Station is an ESTRACK Earth station in Australia for communication with spacecraft after launch, in low Earth orbit, in geostationary orbit and in deep space. It is located 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south of the town of New Norcia, Western Australia. It was the first ESA deep space ground station, followed by Cebreros Station and Malargüe Station.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JAXA</span> Japans national air and space agency

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orbit, and is involved in many more advanced missions such as asteroid exploration and possible human exploration of the Moon. Its motto is One JAXA and its corporate slogan is Explore to Realize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ground station</span> Terrestrial radio station for communication with spacecraft

A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft, or reception of radio waves from astronomical radio sources. Ground stations may be located either on the surface of the Earth, or in its atmosphere. Earth stations communicate with spacecraft by transmitting and receiving radio waves in the super high frequency (SHF) or extremely high frequency (EHF) bands. When a ground station successfully transmits radio waves to a spacecraft, it establishes a telecommunications link. A principal telecommunications device of the ground station is the parabolic antenna.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex</span> Interplanetary radio communication station

The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) is a satellite communication station, part of the Deep Space Network of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located at Tidbinbilla in the Australian Capital Territory. Opened in 1965, the complex was used for tracking the Apollo Lunar Module, and along with its two sister stations at Goldstone, California and Madrid, Spain is now used for tracking and communicating with NASA's spacecraft, particularly interplanetary missions. Its DSS-43 antenna is the only antenna on Earth that can send commands to Voyager 2. It is managed in Australia by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program (SCaN) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

RADARSAT-2 is a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Earth observation satellite. It launched on 14 December 2007 aboard a Starsem Soyuz-FG rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The spacecraft is owned by MDA

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goonhilly Downs</span> Site of Special Scientific Interest in Cornwall, England

Goonhilly Downs is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) that forms a raised plateau in the central western area of the Lizard peninsula in southern Cornwall, England. It is one of 229 English national nature reserves designated by Natural England with an area of almost 1,270 hectares.

The European Space Tracking (ESTRACK) network consists of a number of ground-based space-tracking stations belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA), and operated by the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The stations support various ESA spacecraft and facilitate communications between ground operators and scientific probes such as XMM-Newton, Mars Express, BepiColombo, Gaia. Similar networks are run by the USA, China, Russia, Japan, and India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">THEMIS</span> NASA satellite of the Explorer program

Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission began in February 2007 as a constellation of five NASA satellites to study energy releases from Earth's magnetosphere known as substorms, magnetic phenomena that intensify auroras near Earth's poles. The name of the mission is an acronym alluding to the Titan Themis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maspalomas Station</span> Radio antenna ground station in Spain

Maspalomas Station is an INTA-operated, ESTRACK radio antenna ground station for communication with spacecraft located at the southern area of Gran Canaria island, on the INTA campus. It is situated on the Montaña Blanca hill and is visible from the coastal resort of Meloneras, close to Maspalomas. It was originally established in the 1960s to support NASA's nascent human spaceflight program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chinese Lunar Exploration Program</span> Lunar research program (2004 – present)

The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, also known as the Chang'e Project after the Chinese Moon goddess Chang'e, is an ongoing series of robotic Moon missions by the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of space exploration</span> Overview of and topical guide to space exploration

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lissajous orbit</span> Quasi-periodic orbital trajectory

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The Manned Space Flight Network was a set of tracking stations built to support the American Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab space programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madley Communications Centre</span> Earth station in Kingstone, Herefordshire

Madley Communications Centre is BT Group's earth satellite tracking station, between Madley and Kingstone, Herefordshire, England.

The European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) was a proposed European student mission to the Moon. Student teams from 19 universities throughout Europe worked on the program. ESMO was conceived by the Student Space Exploration & Technology Initiative (SSETI) under the support of the European Space Agency (ESA); prior to the start of Phase A the full responsibility for the management of the program was transferred to the ESA Education Office.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telstar</span> Name of various communications satellites

Telstar is the name of various communications satellites. The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully relayed through space the first television pictures, telephone calls, and telegraph images, and provided the first live transatlantic television feed. Telstar 2 was launched May 7, 1963. Telstar 1 and 2—though no longer functional—still orbit the Earth.

The Commercial Lunar Mission Support Services (CLMSS), also called Lunar Mission Support Services (LMSS) is a collaboration between Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop lunar telecommunications and navigation infrastructure to support lunar scientific and economic development.

References

  1. Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd
  2. "Goonhilly in Cornwall takes off on space missions". BBC News . 11 March 2015. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  3. "Goonhilly Downs, Helston, Cornwall, England, UK Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station". thelivingmoon.com. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  4. "Goonhilly satellite station visitor centre closes". BBC News . 11 March 2010. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  5. 1 2 "Goonhilly at 'forefront of space exploration'". BBC News . Cornwall. 11 January 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  6. "GES Ltd". Archived from the original on 16 August 2015. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  7. Heywood, I.; Kloeckner, H-R.; Beswick, R.; Garrington, S. T.; Hatchell, J.; Hoare, M. G.; Jarvis, M. J.; Jones, I.; Muxlow, T. W. B.; Rawlings, S. (7 March 2011). "Expanding e-MERLIN with the Goonhilly Earth Station". arXiv: 1103.1214 [astro-ph].
  8. Kloeckner, H. -R.; Rawlings, S.; Heywood, I.; Beswick, R.; Muxlow, T. W. B.; Garrington, S. T.; Hatchell, J.; Hoare, M. G.; Jarvis, M. J.; Jones, I.; van Langevelde, H. J. (18 March 2011). "Goonhilly: a new site for e-MERLIN and the EVN". arXiv: 1103.3600 [astro-ph].
  9. "Goonhilly Earth Station hoping for new lease of life". SES. 16 July 2015. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
  10. SSTL and Goonhilly Earth Station Sign Collaboration Agreement with ESA for Commercial Lunar Missions, MoonDaily.com, 2018-04-19