Goonhilly Earth Station, Cornwall

Goonhilly Earth Station, Arthur (Aerial 1)

Goonhilly Earth Station is the largest satellite earth station in the world. It has more than 60 dishes which provide TV, telephone, internet and other communications links between Britain and the rest of the planet. Goonhilly is owned and operated by BT, as well as a working telecommunications facility it is a popular tourist attraction with guided bus tours of the dishes and a multimedia visitor centre.

All of the Goonhilly dishes are named after characters from Arthurian legend. This dish, Arthur (offiicial designation Aerial 01), was the first to be built at Goonhilly. Arthur was built in 1962 to communicate with Telstar and carried the first transatlantic live TV broadcast from the US.

The stainless steel reflector dish is 29.5 metres in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonnes. It can rotate horizontally through 360 degrees in three minutes and vertically at thirty degrees per minute.

In September 2006 BT announced that it planned to scale down the Goonhilly site. According to BBC News only Arthur, which is a listed building, will remain.