Goonhilly Earth Station Limited has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intuitive Machines following the satisfactory completion of regulatory requirements.
Goonhillys primary site sits on the Lizard Peninsula near Helston in Cornwall, with additional sites in Hampshire and two teleports in Connecticut and California. Constructed by the GPO (General Post Office) in the 1960s, the antenna Aerial-1, known as Arthur, received the first transatlantic TV broadcast via the satellite Telstar. Telstar was launched atop a Thor-Delta rocket in July 1962. The Thor-Delta was a direct descendant of the Thor-Able, an example of which you can see up close at the National Space Centre in Leicester, UK (adjacent to the the Blue Streak, of course!). Arthur also received pictures of the moon landing in 1969, broadcasting Neil Armstrong’s “One Small Step” to 600 million people worldwide.
I have family in Cornwall (my other was born in Hayle) so visited many times as a child. British Telecom had a visitor centre there for some time and it was possible to take a bus tour of the site. Sadly the visitor centre closed many years back. I still wonder if the fluffy sock my son lost to the ever present gusty winds in 2007 is still around in the scrub somewhere.
Intuitive Machines are a U.S. based space exploration company founded in Houston Texas in 2013. Their core activities provide access to the moon for commercial and government organisations. They successfully put a lander on the lunar surface in 2024 with a “soft” touchdown.
Goonhilly will expand Intuitive Machines’ Data Transmission and Communications functions, alongside another Intuitive acquisition COMSAT.