NASA announced in November that it will undertake an environmental impact statement (EIS) for its $50 million outrigger project, which would add several 1.8-meter telescopes to the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The move goes beyond what a federal judge had ordered last July and raises hopes that antagonism will begin to thaw between the astronomy community and Native Hawaiians and environmentalists who oppose further developments on the island mountain.
The announcement was made at a joint press conference with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), the organization whose lawsuit won a July ruling that NASA’s earlier environmental assessment was inadequate. Noting that only 3 out of 125 pages in the assessment were devoted to the cumulative impact of building more telescopes, the judge required a more thorough evaluation, but she stopped short of requiring a full EIS. NASA decided to do...
