Space boffins save BT's satellite station for Mars missions Space scientists will redevelop BT's historic Goonhilly satellite station in Cornwall to allow communication with missions to Mars, it is revealed today. The mothballed site will also become a centre of cutting-edge astronomical research as part of a network of huge radio telescopes. Arthur, the world's first parabolic …
"Goonhilly will be linked with the famous Jodrell Bank site, near Manchester, for radio telescopy, forming what is hoped will act as a stepping stone in the development of the Square Kilometre Array, a European plan to build the world's largest telescope in the **southern** hemisphere"
I think you have your globe the wrong way up.
Quote: "Goonhilly will be linked with the famous Jodrell Bank site, near Manchester, for radio telescopy, forming what is hoped will act as a stepping stone in the development of the Square Kilometre Array, a European plan to build the world's largest telescope in the southern hemisphere."
To those above saying wrong hemisphere take a look at the formation of the sentence above.
Forming stepping stone in development (not necessarily part of) the SKA that is planned to be built in Africa or somewhere also known as the southern hemisphere.
Fail icon for reasons that should be obvious!
In about 1969/70 I was on a tanker with a satellite dish. To call goonhilly you had to stop the ship, get a really good nav fix (probably bearings off a pair of radar beacons) and contact Portishead Radio by morse on short wave with the details. If you were lucky you got a timeslot, transponder frequency, beacon frequency, rise time, rise azimuth and orbital inclination.
At rise time you steered the dish around the rise azimuth till you saw the beacon on the spectrum analyser, then started tracking up the inclination. although semi-automatic some manual steering was still required. Then you tuned the transciever to the transponder & listened to other peoples calls till your timeslot came up. The Skipper or the Chief engineer then spoke to head office for a few minutes till the end of your slot. Typically a 25 minute pass was split into 2 minute slots.
Frankly, compared to SSB on short wave it was a right palava. It didn't really catch on till Inmarsat A came out.
But I loved it. Real satellites. Goonhilly. Mechanical x-y resolvers to do the tracking. GOONHILLY! I was talking to Goonhilly on a sputnik! spectrum analysers, double logarithmic AGC Cascaded filters, link budgets, sun avoidance, band choice, horizontal sextant angles, low-elevation diffraction, 350ms propagation delay, true and false horizons. Goonhilly. satellites.
God, it was dodgy and awkward and unreliable, but it was so much fun. Now THAT was cutting edge
That is a very interesting tale, Chris, which might even be a stealthy phish. And if quantum communication, which goes way beyond anything Einstein ever dreamt up, is part of any sensitive satellite stations research for solutions in fundamental energies, and ..... "Goonhilly telescopes can also be connected to global radio astronomy networks that will eventually include the Square Kilometre Array," said Steve Rawlings, professor of astrophysics at Oxford University.
"The Square Kilometre Array will attack truly fundamental questions: the origin and fate of galaxies, stars, planets and life; and the nature of the fundamental laws of the Universe, going beyond Einstein into the biggest unsolved problems like dark energy and quantum gravity."" ...... does at least appear to hint at leading pioneering works rather than mere lapdog support of existing systems and structures, then there is a very good chance of it being home grown for valuable global export, rather than it being offered freely abroad, to be then imported at whatever exorbitant cost can be negotiated for services required. You'd be quite amazed at what out of this world, alien services can do, although whether you would be cleared to hear of them, and whether or not you would be able to believe them, is quite another highly sensitive matter, which can sometimes cause a bit of panic.
"Posted by: amanfromMars | 01/10/11 | 09:17 am |
"In Beijing, Liang said that "We can by no means call ourselves an advanced military force… the gap between us and that of advanced countries is at least two to three decades.""
However, it is most probably so very true, that as an advanced virtual force, are they so far ahead in such as are labeled Great Games, as to be practically omnipotent as they exercise in quantum communications fields of omniscience.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/gates-chinese-military-agree-to-talk-about-talking-more/
[Oh dear, how very disappointing that such a contrary view is not presented. Don't y'all know, that such as is Denial and Censorship is a stealthy, invisible force multiplier] " ........ http://amanfrommars.blogspot.com/2011/01/110110.html
And thanks for hosting the testing, El Reg. It guarantees you an inside track on research and development which can be released and acknowledged as a virtual real project with NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT, which will invariably be also weaponised and AIMODified for Attacks on Defence Systems. Such things always are.
That's a brilliant idea. The government should even have a department that could back it. They could call the department something like: "UK Space Agency". The governement could give this agency money, and the agency could use the money to back the project.
Then we could read things like:
"The new deal sees the creation of a new company, Goonhilly Earth Station (GES) Ltd, set up by Orbit Research Ltd and Oxford University. Qinetiq, the UK SPACE AGENCY and the International Space Innovation Centre are also backing the project."
A brilliant idea. All he has to do is now go back in time about 2 years, and propose the idea BEFORE it actually happens, instead of after...
"Arthur" (Goonhilly 1) is a quite astonishing piece of engineering.
Telstar was not in geostationary orbit, and crossed the sky in less than 20 minutes, so the dish had to be turned at quite a speed to stay on target. But they didn't turn the dish - they turned the WHOLE BUILDING!
As a result G1 was refurbished many times, and kept in use long after satellites were geostationary, because if another dish failed it could be quickly aligned anywhere in the sky as a backup.
I am glad to see it will continue to be used. The picture just doen't give you any idea of how huge it is.
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