Cornwall tracks Nasa spacecraft on mission to search for life on Mars
Goonhilly was monitoring the Perseverance rover as it landed on the red planet on Thursday evening (18th February)
A Nasa spacecraft has landed on Mars to search for signs of life and Cornwall was ready to receive the first ever direct transmission from its surface!
Goonhilly Earth Station on the Lizard was monitoring and tracking the rover as it touched down on the red planet.
Perseverance will gather samples that will be returned to Earth on another mission.
Following successful transmissions, Goonhilly's newly upgraded GHY-6 satellite is set to become the world's first commercial deep space antenna.
Goonhilly Earth Station will play an instrumental role in the next generation of space exploration using its new GHY-6 antenna to enable deep space communications on pioneering missions to the Moon and Mars.
Goonhilly has been working with the ESA over the past few weeks, using Mars Express - a spacecraft on an active Mars mission - as the test vehicle to validate their GHY-6 antenna.
They were shadow tracking Mars Express as it orbited the red planet and the GHY-6 antenna was pointed at Mars during the landing.
Though not an official downlink, Goonhilly was able to receive and potentially decode the signals from the rover, if NASA needed support before and during the landing.
This was the first time communications direct from the surface of Mars were able to be received in the UK, with data able to travel roughly 200 million km in an incredible 10 minutes!
In the next few weeks it will be ESA qualified, able to support any normal operations, including; monitoring telemetry, sending telecommands and downlinking science data.
Crucially the antenna will enable NASA and ESA to ensure continued support for ongoing missions with a long-lasting legacy.
The 32m satellite dish has been upgraded through a 2-year programme funded by the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership, UK Space Agency and ESA.
The upgrade has been completed in time for the expected increased activity around the Moon.
Several missions are expected this year and with the UK Space Agency signed up to the Artemis Accords, GHY-6 will likely play a part in some of these missions.
Hopefully, the antenna will be relaying the steps of a first woman on the Moon.
Ian Jones, CEO, Goonhilly Earth Station: "The conversion of this antenna to become part of the trusted ESA and NASA deep space networks has been part of our business plan right from the beginning.
"Achieving that goal has been extraordinarily difficult. In a sense, the technology upgrade was the easy part - although that in itself was a two-year intensive programme, replacing almost every system on the entire antenna - including 10,000 nuts and bolts.
"Our team has worked along-side colleagues at ESA implementing the sophisticated planning and operational tools required for deep space mission support.
"Now, we are fully equipped for supporting space agency and private missions to the Moon, Mars and other solar system locations, and we can extend that capability as we build out our international network".
CEO of Goonhilly Earth Station, Ian Jones
You can read more about Goonhilly's involvement here or watch the moment Perseverance landed on Mars below...