The acquisition of Goonhilly Earth Station (GES) in Cornwall by US company Intuitive Machines will mean yet another space surveillance tool for the US military in the UK. The deal is subject to UK Government approval but if it goes through then Goonhilly's 44 antennas will join the powerful Fylingdales US space surveillance radar on the North Yorkshire Moors, and the even more powerful US Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) planned for Pembrokeshire, in helping the US Space Force to fulfil their plan to dominate the heavens.

Goonhilly and GCHQ Bude

Goonhilly has an interesting history. In 1962, a satellite receiving station for the commercial communication satellites of Intelsat was established at Goonhilly Downs, just over a hundred kilometres south-southwest of Morwenstow where the facility now known as GCHQ Bude was established. GCHQ (Government Communications Head Quarters) is the UK equivalent of the NSA (National Security Agency) in the US and is the intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence and information assurance to the government and armed forces of the UK. Primarily based at The Doughnut in Cheltenham, GCHQ has various outposts around the country, including Morwntow, just north of Bude in Cornwall.

GCHQ Bude

The downstream link from the commercial communications Intelsat satellites could easily be intercepted by government agencies by placing receiver dishes nearby in the satellites' "footprint". For that, the land at Cleave was allotted to the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works in 1967 and construction of the satellite interception station began in 1969. Two ninety-foot dishes appeared first, followed by smaller dishes in the ensuing years. The station was signposted as "CSOS Morwenstow", with "CSOS" standing for Composite Signals Organisation Station. In 2001, a third large dish appeared, and the station became known as "GCHQ Bude".

From its inception, the station has been an Anglo-American co-operative project. It was the NSA that paid for most of the infrastructure and the technology. The running costs, like payments for the staff, were paid by GCHQ, who also provided the land. The intelligence that was collected by the Bude satellite station was shared by NSA and GCHQ and was also jointly processed.  In 2010, the NSA paid GCHQ £15.5m for redevelopments at the site.

In 1963, TAT-3, an undersea cable linking the United Kingdom to the US, was laid from Tuckerton, New Jersey, US to Widemouth Bay, Cornwall, just ten kilometres south of the site at Cleave Camp (now GCHQ Bude). The British General Post Office routinely monitored all communications passing along the TAT-3 cable, forwarding any messages they felt were relevant to the security services.

The TAT-14 undersea cable landing at Bude was identified as one of few assets of "Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources" of the US on foreign territory in a diplomatic cable leaked to Wikileaks.

AT GCHQ Bude, there are 21 satellite antennae of various sizes and, based on their position, their elevation and their azimuth angle, the antennae are generally orientated towards commercial telecoms satellites of the INTELSAT, Intersputnik and INMARSAT communications networks over the Atlantic Ocean, Africa and the Indian Ocean, as well as towards the Middle East and mainland Europe. Somewhere between 2011 and 2013, a torus antenna was installed, which can receive the signals of up to 35 satellites simultaneously. This antenna is not covered by a radome.

Staff are drawn from GCHQ (UK) and the NSA (US) and the station is operated under the UKUSA agreement, gathering data for the ECHELON signals intelligence (SIGINT) network. Comparable stations in operation include Menwith Hill (UK), Sugar Grove (West Virginia, U.S.), Yakima (Washington, U.S.), Sabana Seca (Puerto Rico), Misawa (Japan), Pine Gap (Australia), Geraldton (Australia), GCSB Waihopai (New Zealand) and GCSB Tangimoana (New Zealand) that cover other INTELSAT areas such as South America and the Pacific Ocean.

In June 2013, The Guardian, using documents leaked by Edward Snowden, revealed the existence of an operation codenamed Tempora, whereby GCHQ is able to tap into data which flows along undersea cables and then store it for up to 30 days, to assess and analyse it. The article refers to a three-year trial set up at GCHQ Bude which, by mid 2011, was probing more than 200 internet connections.

A further Guardian report in December 2013 stated that eavesdropping efforts to target charities, German government buildings, the Israeli Prime Minister and an EU commissioner centred on activities run from GCHQ Bude.

GCHQ Bude also featured extensively in the September 11, 2014 BBC2 Horizon television programme: "Inside the Dark Web". This programme estimated that 25% of all internet traffic travels through Cornwall. Dr Joss Wright of the University of Oxford Internet Institute explained how mirror images of the signals running down underwater Ethernet cables are used to gather and analyse data. The programme claimed that this procedure involves an optical tap device which is inserted at the submarine cable repeater station. A second copy of the data then travels to GCHQ, while the original carries on its intended journey.

On the same programme, Tim Berners-Lee explained how huge volumes of data are analysed by GCHQ computer programmes to identify trends of communication which are deemed to require further examination.

On November 20, 2014, Channel 4 News broadcast an investigation prepared in collaboration with German broadcaster WDR. This report revealed that a leading UK communications company co-operated with GCHQ to allow access to data, including that carried by a rival Indian telecommunications company. The broadcast detailed an operation centred on fibre-optic cables surfacing at Porthcurno beach and Sennen Cove in Cornwall, with data travelling to a nearby cable landing station at Skewjack Farm, and then onwards to GCHQ Bude.

Goonhilly Earth Station

The first dish at Goonhilly received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the US via the Telsar satellite on 11 July 1962. It also played a key role int he Apollo 11 Moon landing and 1985’s Live Aid concert.

BT shut down satellite operations at Goonhilly in 2008 but a visitor centre remained  there until 2010 when BT closed that too. An announcement in 2011 declared that the site was to become a space science centre with some of the dishes being upgraded for deep space communication with spacecraft. Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd was formed and took over the site in 2014.

Since then, it has become what the companies claims is the world's only commercial deep space station and has supported communications with more than 20 missions for space agencies like the ESA and NASA, including CubeSats deployed on the Artemis-I mission, and private exploration companies such as ispace, a private lunar robotic exploration company.

In April 2018, Goonhilly was part of a collaboration partnership for commercial lunar mission support services, with the European Space Agency and Surrey Satellite Technology.

In November 2023 Goonhilly reported that it had purchased two US-based satellite communications (COMSAT) teleports, which provide links between satellites and ground-based communications. According to GES it was expanding its communication services from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Geostationary orbit (GEO) to lunar and deep space.

GES space scientist Olivia Smedley said it was exciting news for the company to expand its presence to America, "one on the west coast, one on the east coast of America will allow us to provide 24/7 access to our deep space missions," she said.

In October 2024 a press release from the UK Government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) reported that it was building on the existing ground facilities at GES to “enhance space operations. In conjunction with the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF)” two new remote ground stations had been installed at GES to expand space-to-ground capability and to enable more experimentation.

The new 3.9m Safran Legion antennas would complement DSTL’s Hermes relocatable ground station to track satellites and download Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) data for military operations as part of the £1.4 billion 2022 STARI Programme.

In 2024 and 2025, the station played a critical communications role in Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 and IM-2 lunar missions.

In September 2025 a UK government press release announced that the “UK Space Agency goes global with 23 new projects” to strengthen international partnerships and develop national capabilities. One of these projects was for a “Long Baseline Multistatic Radar for Deep Space Awareness” was awarded £452,000 and involved Goonhilly Earth Station, the University of Birmingham, the University of Manchester, CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency and MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The project was to link powerful transmitters in Massachusetts and Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands (home of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site) with receivers in the UK and Australia. The system was to detect and track small distant objects in Geostationary orbit for Space Domain Awareness.

Intuitive Machines

Houston-based Intuitive Machines may appear to be an innovative non-military commercial space enterprise having made history in February 2024, by becoming the first non-governmental body to put a spacecraft on the Moon when it landed its Odysseus robot near the lunar south pole. However, it was also one of fourteen companies awarded a $1.843 billion contract in April by Space Systems Command (the US Space Force’s development, acquisition, launch and logistics command) to develop Space Domain Awareness (SDA) systems for the U.S. Space Force’s Andromeda program.

The Andromeda program aims to develop space-based surveillance by using advanced sensors, onboard processing, and satellite communication technologies to improve the identification, tracking and targeting of space objects “to gain predictive battlespace awareness (PBA) that enables offensive and defensive space operations”. The award to Intuitive Machines consists of $450 million in cash and $350 million in stock and would enable the company to expand into strategic defence applications.

According to a company statement:

“Under Andromeda, we will compete to design and field next-generation Space Domain Awareness capabilities to detect, track, and characterize objects in geosynchronous orbit. Our focus is to provide innovative and dependable SDA mission solutions for the U.S. Space Force to maintain space superiority through 2030 and beyond.”

So, after some significant investment by the UK government over the years, GES is now set to become a resource for the US. Although GES and Intuitive Machines are private companies their business involves extensive dealings with the military. Another US facility in the UK that will serve US Space Force in space warfare and in the US domination of space.