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La Voz Canaria

Spain promotes La Palma's bid for the world's largest optical telescope

President Pedro Sánchez has advocated before Xi Jinping for the Canary Island to host the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).

Image of an astronomical telescope in an observatory.
IA

Image of an astronomical telescope in an observatory.

The president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has presented La Palma's bid in Beijing to host the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which will be the world's largest optical observatory.

During his visit to China, Sánchez defended before President Xi Jinping the suitability of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma as the site for this ambitious scientific project.
The TMT, initially designed for Hawaii (USA), has been stalled for years due to opposition from the indigenous community, who consider the Mauna Kea volcano, its original location, sacred. Adding to this difficulty are the cuts in public investment for science applied by the Donald Trump administration in the United States.
In response to this situation, Spain has offered an investment of 400 million euros if the telescope is built in La Palma, which has been considered the 'plan B' by the project's promoters from the outset.
The TMT is an international initiative led by a consortium that includes the California Institute of Technology and the University of California (USA), the Department of Science and Technology of India, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the National Research Council of Canada, the AURA association (comprising 37 US universities interested in astronomy), and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and its National Observatories have also joined as observers.

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