Thirty Meter Telescope may choose an alternate site in the Canary Islands if plans to build the giant device atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii are blocked by opposition from environmentalists and Native Hawaiians.
Native Hawaiians object to the $1.4 billion telescope's construction atop the dormant volcano, considering it "desecration of a sacred mountaintop," Nature.com reported.
Construction there was halted by protests in April 2015, and the state's Supreme Court nullified a permit at the site in December. Hearings began in October on TMT's efforts to gain a new permit from the state’s Bureau of Land and Natural Resources.
While scientists remain hopeful that access will be granted, they are looking at the Canary Islands as a plan B.
"After careful deliberation, the Board of Governors has identified Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (ORM) on La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain, as the primary alternative to Hawaii," Henry Yang, chair of the TMT International Observatory Board, said in a statement Monday. "Maunakea continues to be the preferred choice for the location of the Thirty Meter Telescope, and the TIO Board will continue intensive efforts to gain approval for TMT in Hawaii."
The telescope "will become the most advanced and powerful optical telescope on Earth" and "will enable astronomers to study objects in our own solar system and stars throughout our Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, and forming galaxies at the very edge of the observable Universe, near the beginning of time," according to the TMT website.
It will have a resolution higher than the Hubble Space Telescope, according to the International Business Times.
Mauna Kea is currently home to 13 observatories, at least three of which are being decommissioned, IBT said.
“We just want a mountain to start building on,” Christophe Dumas, a scientist with the TMT International Observatory in Pasadena, California, told Nature.
"I'm glad they're looking at alternative sites," Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the leaders challenging the telescope, told The Associated Press. "I have to say if they do go with the alternative site, I hope they don't do there what they're doing to Native Hawaiians and the people of Hawaii.
The 14,000-foot Mauna Kea summit was chosen as the site in 2009 because it is above the clouds, provides clear views most days of the year, and has little air and light pollution, according to AP.
The TMT project is led by a partnership between the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, the University of California, and the California Institute of Technology.
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