Goonhilly Heritage Society

Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large radiocommunication site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England, UK. Owned by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd^[1] under a 999-year lease from BT Group plc, it was at one time the largest satelliteearth station in the world, with more than 25 communications dishes in use and over 60 in total. The site also links into undersea cable lines.

Its first dish, Antenna One, 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 Centre de télécommunication par satellite de Pleumeur-Bodou (fr) (Brittany) which received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite at 0H47 GMT on July 11, 1962, Antenna One received its 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]

The site's largest dish, has a diameter of 32 metres (105 feet)..

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. The nearby wind generator farm is not part of the complex.