Information Category | 24-12-07 01:17 GMT | Posted by Ian Chicken

Chapter 3: Ascension - The Space Race

When the Garrison left, Ascension became a dependancy of its neighbouring island St Helena. It also meant that control of the island went to the foreign and Commonwealth Office, who in turn passed it on to the Eastern Telegraph Company, whose staff employed there where given official posts on the Island.

Wideawake airfield  (1990's)

A Ship to shore Radio station was set up by the staff to enable communication with passing ships, it was installed in Fort Thornton, and later moved to Fort Hayes.

The Eastern Telegraph Company, became part of a much bigger group when in 1929 they merged with 5 other groups (one being Marconi Wireless Telegraph) and became the Imperial and International Communications Ltd.

This name only lasted for 5 years when in 1934 it was changed to become the now familiar Cable & Wireless

World War II broke out in 1939 and this saw Cable & Wireless assist the Americans with the building of the Airfield on South West Plain, they surveyed the island to locate a possible place for this airstrip to be built.

After the War had finished the General Manager of Cable & Wireless was sent a questionnaire in 1949 asking for details of the islands peak. It was not until 1954 that the Americans extended the Missile test range and Ascension became part of it and it being chosen to house a tracking station, this went operational in 1957.

The 1960's saw a lot of of expansion on Ascension Island with the arrival from the U.K. of Combined Signals Organisation (CSOS ) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (B.B.C.) the South Atlantic Cable Company (S.A.C.C.). Also arriving from America was the National Aeronautical and Space Administration. (N.A.S.A.).

In 1965, NASA started construction of their tracking station at Devils Ashpit. This was to provide tracking and communications for the Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab projects. Cable and Wireless undertook to supply them with the necessary communications.


Left: Ariel view of the Earth Station

A tender was put out to Marconi Communications to design and manufacture a Satellite Earth Station.This would be the company's first Earth Station and only the fifth built worldwide.
                                                                                                              Right: Ascension Earth Station ASC-1N during its construction (Obtained from C&W Collections)

Construction was to on Donkey Plain, the reason for this being that it was well screened from the other island installations.

The Antenna was 42ft in diameter on a tripod style mount, it was of a Non-standard design and size by Intelsat Specifications.
The station originally provided communications for NASA and DECCO in the form of Voice and Telemetry Data. 

Construction was completed in 1966 with testing commencing on 10th November of that year, when the antenna locked
on to an Intelsat II F1 Satellite (the signal coming from Andover E/S in the USA). 

The station went to traffic on 8th April 1967 (coinciding with the operational start of NASA's Devils Ashpit site when it was connected through to Goddard Space Flight Center (via Intelsat II F3). 


Left: Ascension Earth Station ASC-1N (1986