Thirty Meter Telescope project dependent on NSF funding

HILO, Hawai‘i — The fate of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) rests in the hands of the Hawaiian community, observatory officials say.

During a conversation with the Tribune-Herald earlier this month, TMT project manager Fengchuan Liu was candid about the observatory’s past and future on Hawai‘i Island.

Liu said that after the extensive protests against the observatory’s construction in 2019, it became clear to him that no future for the observatory exists without first building up bonds of trust and respect toward the local community, something he said the project disregarded in the past.

“Part of the mistake we made in 2019 was to emphasize, ‘We have a legal right, we get to do this,’” Liu said. “We did not have a good relationship with the entire Hawai‘i community, particularly not with the Native Hawaiian community. And we contributed to division in the community, there’s no doubt.

“On behalf of my organization, we apologize for that,” Liu said.

“I want to say off the bat, we’re very different now from TMT in 2019,” he went on, saying he has assembled a new team dedicated to steering the project toward being a good citizen first and foremost.

Liu said the only path forward for TMT after 2019 was to return to “square zero”: to build up a connection and relationship with the Big Island community regardless of whether the telescope is ever built.

“We submit to the fact that the future of the TMT in Hawai‘i rests with the Hawaiian people,” Liu said, stating that, if the consensus among Hawaiians is that TMT is not welcome on Maunakea, then TMT will accept that decision.

But how that decision may be made or voiced, Liu said, is still unclear.

In the meantime, TMT’s focus is on listening to community feedback — which Liu said mostly manifests as criticism — and public outreach efforts.

For example, TMT Outreach Specialist Yuko Kakazu pointed to the ‘Ale Lau Loa program, which was launched last year in partnership between TMT and Hawai‘i County. The program allows for cultural exchange between Hawaiian students and TMT’s partners — last year, six students visited Okinawa in Japan.

“A lot of people told us we always host people from outside — students from Japan, Canada, the mainland, always come here — but our own keiki don’t have opportunities to go outside,” Kakazu said.

Closer to home, Kakazu said TMT conducts tutoring services every Wednesday, helping students who are struggling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said that program has had a 75 percent success rate — three-quarters of the students who were failing their classes are now passing, or even thriving, after tutoring.

Kakazu said these programs are aimed at underserved areas around the island, and that many of them, such as the ‘Ale Lau Loa program, result in Hawaiian students returning with greater pride and appreciation for their own culture.

“Even for me, as a Native Hawaiian … I’ve learned so much about my culture, even after growing up here,” said Keoki Kai, TMT community engagement adviser.

Kakazu and Liu both said that regardless of the fate of the observatory, TMT is still committed to maintaining these programs, and they will continue even if construction of the observatory on Maunakea is terminated.

After all, the telescope’s future in 2024 is very unclear. Even though Liu said the Hawaiian people will decide whether the telescope is built, there is another force that has yet to make a decision about that: the United States government.

The National Academy of Sciences strongly recommended in 2020 that the U.S. National Science Foundation invest in an “Extremely Large Telescope Project” that would develop both the TMT on Maunakea and the planned Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile.

However, the NSF board announced in February a recommendation that the project not exceed $1.6 billion.

Because that spending limit likely will only barely cover the cost of a single Extremely Large Telescope, NSF will have to choose between one telescope or the other.

In May, NSF will announce a process to determine which telescope NSF will fund. Liu said he does not want to speculate how that plan will be carried out, or when it will be completed, but was confident that his team will make TMT an attractive prospect for NSF.

Significantly, Liu noted that the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile already exists, and that a next-generation observatory in the Northern Hemisphere would be inherently less redundant and allow for greater coverage of the night sky than a second next-gen observatory in the Southern Hemisphere.

However, should NSF choose otherwise, Liu said TMT could be in jeopardy.

“I don’t see a path to complete building the observatory without NSF funding,” Liu said.

So far, Liu said, TMT has received about $2 billion in in-kind support from the project’s partners, which include the California Institute of Technology, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, the Canadian National Research Council, the Department of Science and Technology of the Indian government, and the National Institutes of National Sciences of Japan.

Those partners have continued to make progress on constructing the telescope’s systems, even as construction in Hawai‘i has stalled. Liu said that the observatory’s design is “very mature,” and that 84 percent of its systems and subsystems are either in the final design phases or are design-complete.

So far, 109 segments of the telescope’s eponymous 30-meter-diameter primary mirror have been cut and polished around the world, leaving 383 to go.

Meanwhile, Canada has completed its designs for the telescope’s 18-story dome and adaptive optics systems.

But, Liu added, “we’re obviously limited by how much money we have to now build components,” and Canada’s work currently is on pause now that its design work is complete.

For now, TMT’s partners remain committed to the project, Liu said. But much of it is up in the air until NSF makes its decision. And even after that, he said, another decision also has to be made.

“In the end, we’ll let the community make the decision about our future, and that’s OK,” Liu said.

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Reporter Michael Brestovansky can be reached at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.