The Ascension station

With a surface area of just 10 km², the small island of Ascension is one of the volcanoes rising up from the great ridge which divides the bottom of the South Atlantic Ocean in two.  Governed by an administrator, it is a dependency of its larger neighbour, the island of Saint Helena.  The island, which was discovered by the Portuguese on Ascension Day in 1501, now belongs to the United Kingdom.  After NASA closed its telemetry station on the island in 1989, CNES and ESA decided to build their own facility.  This station is currently run by the British company VT Merlin Communication.