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 Guinea, the "Island of the Papua". Through Afonso's diplomatic activities, Portugal opened the sea between Europe and China. As early as 1513, Jorge de Albuquerque, a Portuguese commanding officer in Malacca, sent his subordinate Jorge Álvares to sail to China on a ship loaded with pepper from Sumatra. After sailing across the sea, Jorge Álvares and his crew dropped anchor in Tamao, an island located at the mouth of the Pearl River. This was the first Portuguese to set foot in the territory known as China, the mythical "Middle Kingdom" where they erected a stone Padrão. Álvares is the first