Santa Maria is the most southern (and eastern) as well as the geological oldest island of the 9 Azorian islands. About 6000 people live on the so called golden island, golden due to the color of the grass which turns golden in summer. We experienced the Island as a true Atlantic pearl, authentic, with beautiful villages and much greener than Porto Santo.
There is also a satellite tracking and receiving station on Santa Maria with one dish dedicated to the tracking of ESA rockets as the 2nd contact for telemetry and health data after launch in Kourou, the European space port in French Guiana. We could not resist to ring the bell and the friendly staff, all from the island, gave us an ad-hoc in-official and very informative tour. Besides for ESA they also provide services for a range of other organisation's and commercial space operators, as e.g. they operate an active radar antenna which allows tracking of space objects (eg debris) down to the size of 10 cm. They even rotated the ESA antenna for us (I was not aware that it rotates so fast). Thanks, really impressive! (see video link here).
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