01-12-2020, 05:12 PM
The lease for the area in which the observatories operate ends in 2033, so unless that is renewed, all the observatories have to be decommissioned by then. In the meantime, funding and technical issues mean the CSO and Hoku Kea are currently going through the decommissioning process - nothing to do with the TMT. You also need to remember this decommissioning nonsense has come from the state, not from the MK observatories, so it's purely political. The reason UKIRT was named as the third observatory to be decommissioned (which is no longer the case) was due to due a completely illogical and unscientific decision made by politicians and the UH Board of Regents.