The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) was to be built in Hawaii, but it ran into opposition with indigenous groups that considered its proposed site as sacred.

Later the TMT's board said that a site in the Canary Islands, Spain, may act as a potential alternative. The $1.4bn project enables experts to go through the early Universe and look onto the atmospheres of exoplanets.

It is one of the big observatories including European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) and space-based James Webb telescope which intended to lead astronomy into the 2020s and beyond.

Cloud-free Pacific skies, low atmospheric water vapour and other attributes make conditions at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, among the best in the world for astronomy.

The site intended as the TMT had been below the the 4,207m, which is the summit of the dormant volcano.

Opposition to the construction of observatories on the top of Mauna Kea has been continuing for decades. Among most of the native Hawaiians, Mauna Kea has been considered as the most sacred of all mountains on the island, with a special connection to their religion's deities.

So continued development has been considered a desecration. As construction was about to begin on the project in April 2015, protestors stopped accessing roads to prevent crews on the site, which resulted in in several arrests. But opponents had been issuing their complaints through the courts.

All these reasoned that the permit was issued before the opponents,  got the chance to state their case.

Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald stated,  "Quite simply, the board put the cart before the horse when it issued the permit," at the time.

This indicated that the TMT project would have to seek a new permit if it wants to proceed with construction on Mauna Kea.

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By Prakriti Neogi