RAF Fylingdales is a Royal Air Force station on Snod Hill in the North York Moors which operates as part of the UK’s Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS).
Data collected by the station is shared with the United States, with the primary purpose to give warning of an impending ballistic missile attack.
Its secondary role is the detection and tracking of orbiting objects and it keeps track of spy satellites used by other countries.
The station was sited on a former wartime mortar range which had to be comprehensively cleared by RAF Bomb Disposal before construction could begin.
Building of the three 130-foot (40 m) diameter 'golfballs' or geodesic domes (radomes) which contained mechanically steered radar began in 1962, and the site became operational on September 17 1963.
The ‘golf balls’ were replaced by the current tetrahedron ('pyramid') structure in the early 1990s.
1. Interior of the huge 'Radome' observatory telescope
1st September 1963: The tracking radar aerial, at Fylingdales Early Warning Station Photo: Keystone/Getty Images
2. The construction site
RAF Fylingdales, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Systems radar base with its domes, known as 'Radomes', under construction, October 2 1962. Photo: Jimmy Sime/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
3. The three domes became known locally as the 'Golf Balls'
The domes contain mechanically steered radar, using tropospheric scatter to communicate. Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
4. Digging the foundations
14th March 1961: Steel for the concrete foundations of the radar dome building is being worked on. Photo: Central Press/Getty Images