[4] Wideawake Airfield (named after a noisy colony of sooty terns nearby) was built by the US military in 1942 by arrangement with the British government.

[7] An unusual visitor was a captured German Junkers Ju 88 bomber, which landed there in October 1943 as it was being flown from the Middle East to the United States in stages.

[9] The base was re-garrisoned by the RAF in 1982 and used extensively as a staging airfield, for the Avro Vulcan bombers and the Handley Page Victor tankers, during the Falklands War.

[13] In June 2020 the U.S. Department of Defense announced the runway would be repaired, with a completion date in 2022 after eighteen months work; until then commercial flights were suspended.

[18] The NASA Tracking Station at Devil's Ashpit and the Cable & Wireless Earth Station at Donkey Plain were built in the mid-1960s for space operations and communications, including the latter's use for transmitting "microwave borne data via the Early Bird Satellite back to the NASA facility at Andover, Maine".

[19] The station comes under the overall jurisdiction of the Commander British Forces South Atlantic Islands, an officer of one-star rank.

Flights are currently scheduled on the second week of every month, arriving at Ascension on Saturday afternoon and returning to Saint Helena on Sunday morning.

In January 2013, a Delta Air Lines Boeing 777-200LR en route from Johannesburg to Atlanta diverted to Ascension as a result of engine problems.

An Airbus A330 aircraft operated by AirTanker Services on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) carried out those flights although a limited number of commercial passenger tickets were available.

[31] While A330s were unable to land at the airport until the repair reached a stage to permit the resumption of full flight operations, the United States military continued to maintain a weekly flight between the island and Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, only for the use of its personnel, while the MV Ascension supply ship regularly services US facilities.