Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall - Satellite Antenna - John Hinde postcard c.1964

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Dish Aerial GPO Radio Station, Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall
• Publisher:  John Hinde Ltd. 2DC75 (photo E. Ludwig)
• Postally used:  yes
• Stamp:  International Geographical Congress stamp 1964 2&half d. (SG641)
• Postmark(s):  unclear cds
• Sent to:  Walsall
• Notes / condition:  bumped corner

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large telecommunications site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England, UK. Owned by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd 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 25 communications dishes in use and over 60 in total. The site also links into undersea cable lines.

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 in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonnes. After Pleumeur Bodou (Brittany) which received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite at 0H47 GMT on July 11, 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 1969 moon landings and 1985's Live Aid concert.^[1]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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 iMac 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.""^[2][3]

On 11 January 2011 it was announced that part of the site is to be sold to create a space science centre.^[4] This will involve upgrading some of the dishes to make them suitable for ""deep space communication with spacecraft missions"". A new company has been formed to manage the operations, Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd.^[5] The company will lease most of the antennas for at least three years with the option to buy the entire complex in the future.

There are plans to connect one or more of the Goonhilly dishes into global radio astronomy interferometer networks.^[6][7]

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"".^[8]

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: british

sub-theme=england

county/ country=yorkshire

number of items=single

period=post war (1945 - present)

postage condition=posted