A Hike to the Old NASA Tracking Station

On a previous hike, a friend and I hiked Middletons next to Green Mountain.

The sheep were curious.

A view of Ascension Auxiliary Airfield and my distant Satcom station.

Interesting lava formations.

A marker planted by the Navy.

Interesting plant formation on this rock.

We hiked to the top and then down into a beautiful valley.

At times the trail was quite tedious to traverse.

On my way to the old NASA tracking station.

I have heard of several people having heart attacks while hiking the many Ascension trails. They can be hard. This day I left my room at 8am and returned six hours later. It is a mostly uphill 8 miles to get here. What a cool hike though.

The beautiful South Atlantic ocean.

The main building of the old NASA tracking station. This was part of the Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network from the Apollo and Space Shuttle days. 

The Devil's Cauldron.

I almost transferred to this station in the late-70's from the Kauai station I worked at from 1976-1979. As I walked around I could picture what and where all the antennas were located by the size and orientation from the station.

I was amazed that the few not boarded over windows were not broken.

The front.

Green Mountain. I hiked to this summit a few weeks ago.

The Devil's Ashpit.

Recent lava from a thousand years ago.

 

The Ascension Island NASA tracking station in 1967. Green Mountain is in the background.

The station closed in 1990 due to the network of the Transfer Data and Relay Satellites which closed most ground stations including the one I worked at in Hawaii in the '70s. On one of my hikes, I hiked to the boresite tower on the other side of the Devil's Cauldron as seen in the upper far right.