Kiritimati Kiritimati Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, is a Pacific Ocean raised coral atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name "Kiritimati" is a respelling of the English word "Christmas" in the Kiribati language, in which the combination "ti" is pronounced "s", and the name is thus pronounced . The island has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world, about ; its lagoon is roughly the same size. The atoll is about in perimeter, while the lagoon shoreline extends for over . Kiritimati comprises over 70% of the total land
Kiritimati service per week. A monthly air freight service is flown using a chartered Boeing 727 from Honolulu operated by Asia Pacific Airlines. The abandoned Aeon Field, constructed before the British nuclear tests, is located on the southeastern peninsula, NW of South East Point. In the early 1950s, Wernher von Braun proposed using this island as a launch site for manned spacecraft. There is a Japanese JAXA satellite tracking station; the abandoned Aeon Field had at one time been proposed for reuse by the Japanese for their now-canceled HOPE-X space shuttle project. Kiritimati is also located fairly close to the Sea