The future of one of the world’s largest telescopes — for which UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang chairs the board — proposed for the highest peak in Hawai‘i received an unfavorable ruling last week from the Hawai‘i Supreme Court. The order temporarily prohibiting workers from maintaining idled vehicles sitting atop Mauna Kea is relatively minute, but the state’s high court justices previously questioned the due process of the land-use permits issued for the $1.4 billion project — central to a fight between Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) proponents and many Hawaiian natives.
The University of California partnered with Caltech 15 years ago to plan for the next generation’s premier land-based telescope — 13 times greater than the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The 18-story observatory, proponents say, would more sharply measure the first stars formed after the big bang and advance the possibility for humans to live on other planets. In 2003, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation gave an initial grant to design the state-of-the-art telescope and have since pledged a total of $250 million. Four other nations — Japan, China, India, and Canada — are also part of the effort. The University of Hawai‘i granted a sublease to TMT to build on the mountain.
But construction of the observatory has been stalled since early April, when hundreds of protesters blocked workers from traveling up the mountain, a place deemed sacred and ecologically sensitive to native Hawaiians. Thirty-one people were arrested, and protests erupted on Maui and other islands. Earlier this month, TMT said it planned to do site preparation work in the near future. Opponents promised to mobilize last week, but the court’s ruling placated protesters.