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) the others, for fear of missing the summer southwesterly monsoon winds to take them across to India - a delay which could add as much as an extra year to their journey (see Portuguese India Armadas). So the Indian Ocean crossing of the 5th Armada was to be done in separate waves. The second squadron, the ships of Francisco de Albuquerque and Nicolau Coelho, were the first to cross the Indian Ocean in August 1503. They were followed soon after by the solitary ship of Duarte Pacheco Perreira (of the first squadron), followed soon after by d'Almada's "São Cristóvão" (on