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
5th Portuguese India Armada (Albuquerque, 1503) for Lisbon. They were unaware of the tragic fate of the squad of Francisco de Albuquerque and Nicolau Coelho (and possibly unaware of Ataíde too). Almada's ship began to have trouble, and they were forced to make a stop at the watering hole of São Brás (Mossel Bay) (there, Albuquerque found a message from António de Saldanha, the captain of the third squadron, saying that he had been there the previous October). While at São Brás, they realized that the ship of Albuquerque had rotted through and they were forced into lengthy repairs. On May 1, 1504, Afonso de Albuquerque