A Cornwall satellite ground station on the Lizard peninsula, which tracked the first transatlantic TV link in 1962 and today offers commercial deep-space and satellite communications.
Goonhilly Earth Station is a satellite ground station on Goonhilly Downs, on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. Its own description is that it is the UK's space communications gateway and the world's only commercial deep space ground station. It provides satellite connectivity, teleport services and operational support for lunar and deep space missions, and it also does research and development, manufacturing, training and outreach. A ground station is a set of large dishes that talk to satellites and spacecraft. Customers named by the company include SES, Intelsat, Eutelsat and Inmarsat, plus space agencies and governments.
The site's history is famous. In 1962 its dish Arthur received the first transatlantic television signal, relayed by Telstar. In 1969 Arthur helped carry Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon to about 600 million viewers, and later it carried Live Aid in 1985. BT closed it in 2008. In 2014 Ian Jones assembled a team and set up Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd to take it over, making it the first privately owned deep space network. The firm says its purpose is "Goonhilly enables the safe, sustainable, and secure use of space". In 2021 upgrades to the 32-metre GHY-6 dish began offering commercial lunar and deep space links. Its website says it was acquired by Intuitive Machines in 2026.
The station covers about 142 to 160 acres of a remote, low-population site on the Lizard that has little radio interference. The site is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, with rare heathland plants, rabbits and alpacas, and it holds Bronze Age monuments. It has around 40 antennas, many of them five-metre dishes in what staff call the antenna farm, plus the 32-metre GHY-6 (Merlin) and GHY-3, a cooled radio telescope. It tracked NASA's Artemis 1 mission, receiving signals from the Orion capsule over about six weeks. Avanti also has a secondary site there.
The people described in the sources show a small, specialist team. Chief executive Ian Jones has said that communications is something that "quite often gets forgotten" in space, and that Goonhilly is "the world's only facility that is set up, qualified and ready" for lunar communications. Space scientist Olivia Smedley works on artificial intelligence for satellite data and upgraded the antenna for ESA's Mars Express. Director of space engineering Matt Cosby says the station talks to roughly 10 to 20 spacecraft every day. We found no description of its culture, so that should be asked directly.
Roles at a ground station include RF and antenna engineers, mission operations staff, software and data scientists, systems engineers, technicians who maintain large dishes, and commercial, finance and outreach colleagues. Physics, engineering, computing and mathematics are the natural subjects, and the Cornwall location suits people who want a space career without moving to a big city. The company's own site is the place to see openings.
Website: www.goonhilly.org
PURPOSE helps school and university students explore 62 sectors and over 1,000 entry-level careers in the UK, then connects them directly with employers.
Explore PURPOSE