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
NRP Afonso de Albuquerque (1934) November 1942, "Afonso de Albuquerque" was in Lourenço Marques when the torpedoed and sank the British troop ship off the coast of Natal Province, South Africa. "Nova Scotia" had 1,052 people aboard, most of them Italian prisoners of war or civilian internees, but in accordance with the Laconia Order that Admiral Dönitz had issued two months previously, "U-177" left the scene without rescuing survivors. Instead the German "Befehlshaber der U-Boote" (BdU) requested help from the Portuguese authorities, who sent "Afonso de Albuquerque" to the scene. The ship reached the position the next day, by which time survivors who were in