Ascension Island a staging point by the British military during the Falklands War. Ascension Island hosts one of four ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein Island, Diego Garcia, and Cape Canaveral) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. NASA operates a Meter Class Autonomous Telescope (MCAT) on Ascension Island for tracking orbital debris, which is potentially hazardous to operating spacecraft and astronauts, at a facility called the John Africano NASA/AFRL Orbital Debris Observatory. In 1501, the Portuguese navigator Afonso de Albuquerque sighted the island on Ascension Day (which fell on 21 May that year) and named
Afonso de Albuquerque discovering their sea routes. Afonso found what had evaded Columbus' grasp – the wealth of the Orient. His discoveries did not go unnoticed, and it took little time for Magellan to arrive in the same region a few years later and discover the Philippines for Spain, giving birth to the Papal Treaty of Zaragoza. Afonso's operations sent a voyage pushing further south which made the European discovery of Timor in the far south of Oceania, and the discovery of Papua New Guinea in 1512. This was followed up by another Portuguese, Jorge de Menezes in 1526, who named Papua New