* Astronomy

Tiny tracking site plays gigantic role in space launches

Before Atlantis lifts off on the final shuttle flight, a tiny, little-known team of experts from Patrick Air Force Base will spring into action on a remote, somewhat mysterious island in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
A mere blip on the globe, many local space workers and military personnel have gone to live on the picturesque, but mostly desolate island during five-plus decades to handle critical tracking and communications for hundreds of important U.S. space missions -- from the trail-blazing early missile shots, to John Glenn's first orbit of Earth, to the Apollo moon shots, and the shuttle missions that delivered science and military craft to space and later built the International Space Station.
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