Goonhilly Earth Station (GES) Ltd are transforming the BT satellite communications site at Goonhilly into a new Space Science centre.
The Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is located on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. It’s famous for many reasons, but perhaps most notably, for receiving, the first ever trans-Atlantic satellite TV images, broadcast by Telstar, on July 11, 1962. The impressive 25.9m dish called Arthur was used for that historic event.
The Register has published an article by journalist SA Mathieson following a recent visit to the site. This included seeing the AMSAT-UK ground station used to track the satellites FUNcube-1 and UKube-1 which both carry educational payloads developed by radio amateurs from the voluntary satellite organisations AMSAT-UK and AMSAT-NL. The station comprises an Asus PC with FUNcube Dongle Pro+ Software Defined Radio (SDR) and a turnstile (crossed dipoles) antenna.
SA Mathieson also visited another recent addition to the site, the radome used by the imaging start-up Planet Labs Inc to communicate with its constellation of “Dove” CubeSats.
Read Suffering satellites! Goonhilly’s ARTHUR REBORN for SPAAAACE
Goonhilly Earth Station http://www.goonhilly.org/
FUNcube Telemetry Receive Antenna System
FUNcube Dongle Pro Plus SDR http://FUNcubeDongle.com/