Station terrienne de télécommunications spatiales de Lessive, Satellite ground station in Lessive, Rochefort, Belgium
The Station terrienne de télécommunications spatiales de Lessive is a satellite ground station in Lessive, part of Rochefort, in the Famenne region. Its white parabolic dishes, 18 and 30 metres across and mounted 22 to 35 metres high on grey lattice steelwork, stand on concrete bases within a fenced 50-hectare site, beside a 52-metre radio tower.
Built by Bell Telephone, the station opened in 1972 when King Baudouin inaugurated its first antenna, giving Belgium the Intelsat facilities it needed as one of the organisation's 11 member countries. Three near-identical dishes joined it in 1993, with a fifth planned. Belgacom sold the satellite activity between 2007 and 2008 to the Indian group ORG Informatics, whose successor BSS was declared bankrupt on 24 October 2016.
The site's nickname, the "grandes oreilles" (big ears), comes from the antennas' shape and was used when the facility drew curious visitors for years. From the 1990s, Belgacom, Le Forem and Win ran the Technobel training centre here, teaching information and communication technologies until it moved to Ciney in 2008. The mini-series La Corde, broadcast on Arte from 27 January 2022, was filmed on the site.
The site lies in the Famenne near Lessive, a village in the commune of Rochefort, reached from exit 22A of the E411 motorway. The antennas stand on a roughly 50-hectare estate, now split between a 43-hectare parcel and a 6-hectare one. The dishes and the 52-metre radio tower are seen from outside the grounds.
The site was a filming location for the Arte mini-series La Corde, first broadcast on 27 January 2022. The parabolic dishes measure 30 and 18 metres across and stand 22 to 35 metres high, while the radio tower reaches 52 metres. In 2018 the Liège businessman Christophe Nihon presented a project called Jardin des Paraboles for the former RTT site.
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