Ascension Island
Friday, 25 November 2022 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Great Britain / Großbritannien General
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Royal Marine barracks in former Royal Dockland in Georgetown © JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD/cc-by-sa-3.0
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Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the
Equator in the
South Atlantic Ocean . It is about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the coast of Africa and 1,400 miles (2,300 km) from the coast of
South America . It is governed as part of the
British Overseas Territory of
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha , of which the main island,
Saint Helena , is around 800 miles (1,300 km) to the southeast. The territory also includes the sparsely populated
Tristan da Cunha archipelago, 2,300 miles (3,700 km) to the south, about halfway to the
Antarctic Circle .
Named after the day of its recorded discovery, Ascension of Jesus , Ascension Island was an important safe haven as a coaling station to mariners and a refueling stop for commercial airliners back in the days of international air travel by flying boats . Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty from 22 October 1815 to 1922. During World War II , it was an important naval and air station, especially providing antisubmarine warfare bases in the Battle of the Atlantic .
Royal Marine barracks in former Royal Dockland in Georgetown © JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD/cc-by-sa-3.0
The island is the location of
RAF Ascension Island , which is a
Royal Air Force station , a
European Space Agency rocket tracking station, a British-American
signals intelligence facility and the
BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station. The island was used extensively as a staging point by the
British military during the
Falklands War . Ascension Island hosts one of four ground antennas that assist in the operation of the
Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system (the others are on
Kwajalein Island,
Diego Garcia , and
Cape Canaveral ).
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.
Read more on
Wikivoyage Ascension Island and
Wikipedia Ascension Island (
Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State -
Weather report by weather.com -
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Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index ). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at
comment@wingsch.net . Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.
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