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 and established the first European permanent settlement on Chinese soil, which served as a permanent colonial base in southern China, and the two empires maintained an exchange in culture and trade for nearly 500 years. The longest empire in history (1515–1999), begun by Afonso de Albuquerque five centuries earlier, ended when Portugal ceded the government of Macau to China. Afonso de Albuquerque pioneered trade relations with Thailand, and was as such the first recorded European to contact Thailand. Afonso de Albuquerque had a bastard son with an unrecorded woman. He legitimized the boy in February 1506. Before his death, he