Scientists at Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall, which was once the largest satellite station in the world, say they will be able to provide deep-space communication facilities for missions to Mars within the next five years.

Nearly £10 million is being spent to upgrade some of the biggest antennas, and a new data centre has been opened to help process the huge amounts of data that will be involved in future space missions.

Chief executive Ian Jones (www.goonhilly.org) said: “There’s a lot of changes in the space industry at the moment, a lot of exploration and new missions planned to the Moon and Mars. We’re going to be the first private company to provide the communications services for those missions.”

There are more than 30 antennas at Goonhilly receiving data from satellites orbiting the Earth. Mars mission communications for NASA and the European Space Agency could be run from Goonhilly 6, which is 32m wide.

The facility last month celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, when it received images of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission and distributed them around Europe.