flyARIA.com · ARIA History and Archive · Est. 2000
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Deployment Sites

Ascension Island AFS

Mid-Atlantic rock and runway: Eastern Range tracking station and a frequent ARIA staging base between Africa and South America.

Region South AtlanticFile 01 / 19
Mid-Atlantic rock and runway: Eastern Range tracking station and a frequent ARIA staging base between Africa and South America.
Ascension Island seen from the International Space Station. Photo: NASA · Source

Ascension Island sits in the South Atlantic roughly midway between Brazil and Africa. The British territory hosts Wideawake Field (RAF Ascension Island) and a long-running United States tracking and telemetry presence tied to the Eastern Range out of Florida. From the island, radars and other instruments watch missiles and space launches as they climb out over the Atlantic.

For Apollo Range Instrumentation Aircraft and later Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft, Ascension was a natural downrange staging base. Crews could position an ARIA where ground stations could not cover mid-ocean telemetry and voice relays, then recover to the short volcanic runway and sparse facilities that range crews knew well.

Archive material on flyARIA preserves both the operational picture and the human one: Robin Wheaton’s first-hand Ascension story, video of an EC-18 landing on the island, and the note that EC-18B 81-0891 staged the last ARIA mission from Ascension Island on 24 August 2001. The island remained part of Eastern Range support long after the Apollo era—today’s 45th Operations Group Detachment 2 continues range instrumentation work there under Space Force lineage.

Milestones

  1. WWII–1950sWideawake Field — The wartime airfield grows into a permanent mid-Atlantic staging and support site.
  2. Eastern RangeTracking station — U.S. instrumentation on Ascension supports Atlantic missile and space launches from Florida.
  3. ARIA eraStaging base — ARIA aircraft deploy to Ascension for mid-ocean telemetry and voice coverage.
  4. 2001-08-24Last ARIA mission — EC-18B 81-0891 stages the final ARIA mission from Ascension Island.

On flyARIA

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Photographs, TDY notes, and corrections from ARIA crews and families belong here. Email [email protected] — no forms. Nothing is published as personal recollection without a source.

Summary original to flyARIA.com. Photograph: NASA. Works of the U.S. Government are generally in the public domain in the United States; credit does not imply endorsement. Map coordinates are approximate.

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