An artist rendering of the Thirty Meter Telescope, planned for construction on Maunakea in Hawaii.Credit: TMT International Observatory/Courtesy of NAOJ with the cooperation of Mitsubishi Electric (CC BY 4.0) They have been planning for years to build the Giant Magellan Telescope on a mountaintop in Chile, and the Thirty Meter Telescope on the Hawaiian mountain Maunakea. Construction has started in Chile, while the Thirty Meter project has been building telescope components and doing other off-site work owing to concerns from Native Hawaiians over Maunakea, which they consider sacred. Both projects are backed by international groups of funders, but neither has the estimated US$3 billion needed to fully fund its telescope. Many astronomers had hoped that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) would contribute money to cover the funding shortfall. But last week the National Science Board, which oversees the NSF, recommended that the agency cap its giant-telescope contributions at...
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