Since its early activity in 1955 the Grand Turk tracking station has supported practically all of the minor and major missile and rocket systems, from the now obsolete air breathing missiles like the Snark, Bomarc and the Matador to the mighty Saturn rocket that carried men to the Moon. Grand Turk also played important roles in National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) programs first with the installation of a Minitrack NASA site to track Vanguard satellites and later installations were constructed for the manned space projects. While other tracking stations on Antigua and Ascension have had seperate NASA manned space flight tracking installations operating independently from the AFETR stations this was not the case at Grand Turk and this station should not be considered a NASA station. Special NASA equipment was installed at a few of the Eastern Test Range stations, like Grand Turk, to support the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. However in these programs Grand Turk was considered a "satellite" station of Cape Canaveral, Forida with all data and information being relayed to the Cape Canaveral Mission Control Center for dissemination. Thus the importance of Grand Turk was often overshadowed by the activities and reports emanating from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Grand Turk Island tracking station officially closed down February 29, 1984. It became obsolete due to advances in space technology, something that it helped to achieve, and was replaced by data gathering satellites.

On the day of February 20, 1962 when the United States of America launched its first orbiting astronaut the name Grand Turk was thrust into the limelight and made front page news around the world. Astronaut John Glenn, after completing 3 orbits around the Earth, splashed down in Grand Turk waters, was successfully recovered and taken to Grand Turk Island for post de-briefing, medical tests and press conferences. Grand Turk Island has never been the same since! Even though this occurance is now past history and greater space achievements have occured elsewhere this one big event will live in the minds of the islanders as well as those tracking personnel who were fortunate enough to be stationed there and consider it as something very special.

The flight of John Glenn in his Mercury capsule is now commemorated a second time on the 1977 postage stamps by the Turks and Caicos Islands. The first time was in 1972 on the 10th anniversary of his launch and splashdown. A stamp in the 1977 series depicts the launch of the Mercury Atlas rocket on the 25 cent value and John Glenn's Mecury capsule, Friendship 7, in orbit is on the 1 cent value. These 1977 stamps are in a slightly different format from the 1972 commemorative stamps.

Only one of these new 1977 postage stamps directly relate to a tracking facility at Grand Turk and unfortunately it is not identified on the stamp. The 6 cent value is labeled "Tracking Station on Grand Turk" which implies that this is the entire tracking station but this is not the case. It should have been labeled as a tracking "radar site" as there were other different sites scattered about the island performing different functions that comprise a whole tracking station. This 6 cent stamp shows the TPQ-18 radar installation which was located on the east side of the island.