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) to combat other surface vessels, as they were intended, mainly, to support amphibious operations and troops on land. After the Second World War, the "Afonso de Albuquerque" class ships were reclassified as frigates. In her career "Afonso de Albuquerque" served mainly in the Indian and the Pacific oceans, protecting the Portuguese territories of Mozambique, India, Macau and Timor. On 9 September 1936 the crews of the "Afonso de Albuquerque" and the destroyer "Dão" mutinied while anchored in Lisbon harbour. Opposed to the Salazar dictatorship's support of the Nationalists rebels against the pro-government Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, the sailors