Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station has been a landmark on the Lizard Peninsula for more than half a century and now the Museum of Cornish Life in Helston has given a glimpse back in time to some of its history.

The photographs include a young Andrew George in 1997, the year he was elected MP for west Cornwall, pictured with Nick Lea (left) from Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station receiving a major environmental award from Steve Warman of English Nature (standing).

It was the year that Goonhilly Downs was made a Site of Special Scientific Interest by English Nature.

Also pictured are the children from the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station Care and Learning Centre, beside the satellite dish Aerial 1, more popularly known as Arthur.

Staff member Viv Horne (back left) is pictured with the children in this press photograph taken by Colin Ross in around 1997.

Two further images show former station manager George Banner, firstly being interviewed by Fife Robertson outside the new Aerial 3 in a shot by Osborne Studios (Helston) Ltd, and then with Neil White, who was to become a future station manager, next to Aerial 4 under construction.

The final photograph is a black and white aerial view of the building of Aerial 3 at Goonhilly Earth Satellite Station, taken in 1970.

Information on the back of the photograph states that hillocks in the fields were built at the outbreak of World War II to prevent enemy attack or gliders landing.

For the next four weeks the museum is hosting an exhibition by Paula Bolton, artist in residence at Goonhilly Earth Station since 2014.

She has created the exhibition GH52 - The Artist Behind The Wire, documenting her life working within the confines of the earth station, which runs until Saturday, June 20.

In January 2018 she set herself a personal challenge to send a photographic tweet once a week for 52 weeks, producing a digital print at the end of each month to document events.

The exhibition presents her work within the history of Goonhilly and includes a slide show that reproduces the images of her prints currently hanging along the curved corridor at Goonhilly, helping them emerge from behind the wire into the public domain.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Goonhilly playing a pivotal role in broadcasting the first moon landing in 1969 to televisions around the world, thanks to its satellite dish Arthur, which at one point was the largest in the world.

The first satellite dish was built on site at Goonhilly Downs, on the Lizard Peninsula, in 1962 and for a while it was a busy hub of communication, transmitting broadcasts around the world.

While operations ended at Goonhilly in 2008, it has since been given a new lease life as a space science centre, with some of the dishes upgraded to make them suitable for deep space communication with spacecraft missions.