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) having had a generally less troubled trip than the others, was the first to round the Cape of Good Hope - albeit losing one ship, that of Pedro Vaz da Veiga, in the process. Francisco Albuquerque's squadron seems to have been the first of the three squadrons to arrive on the East African coast (Malindi). August, 1503 - Afonso de Albuquerque's first squadron rounded the Cape of Good Hope, tossed by terrible storms. According to Empoli (p. 222), the "Catharina Dias" was sunk, and the remainder were separated. The ship Empoli was on (probably d'Almada's) was forced to stop in