The University of Hawaii announced on Friday that the UKIRT telescope on Maunakea is, officially, to be decommissioned:
https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2025/06/27/uh-to-decommission-3rd-maunakea-telescope/
UKIRT once stood for “United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope.” Which may have you thinking, “wait- why is the University of Hawaii telling us about a British telescope?” Yes, originally, the Royal Observatory funded, built, and operated the observatory on the big island of Hawaii, due to the favorable conditions (particularly in the infrared) atop the high peaks. However, those same peaks are sacred to native Hawaiians, leading to a long-running dispute. It turns out legal authority for the mountaintops rests with the state of Hawaii, which in turn assigned the University of Hawaii as its agent. It is thus the UH’s role to mediate this land contention.
Furthermore, the UKIRT had a finite life. First observing in 1979, the observatory ran out of UK pounds in the early 21st Century. Rather than waste a resource that was already paid and built, the United Kingdom agreed to turn over the (still usable) telescope to whoever would pay- effectively a coalition of NASA, the University of Hawaii, University of Arizona, and Lockheed Martin. The telescope was then simply “UKIRT,” not standing for anything else anymore.
And now even that arrangement has run its course. The dispute over the mountaintops is still running; multiple astro-organizations still find Maunakea to be a great site for observing, and want to upgrade or begin telescopes. In response, the University of Hawaii is (trying to) please community sensibilities. For each additional telescope, at least one old telescope will be torn down, maybe two. Which means the axe has to fall somewhere; it turns out to be on the UKIRT.
We might placate ourselves, telling each other that we still have the IRTF (InfraRed Telescope Facility) on Maunakea. In fact, that’s the argument- UKIRT is redundant. But UKIRT is arguably better, at ~3.8 meter aperture, to the IRTF’s 2.5m. And we ‘just got’ the TAO (University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory), on Cerro Chajnantor in Chile. The end of construction for TAO was declared on May 30, 2024. On-sky observing for actual science will be any day now.
But progress is not a zero-sum game, maybe by definition. A growing field means growth, not retreat, or even treading water. If I had a magic wand to wave, I suppose I would call growth UKIRT + TAO, with no IRTF; the newer IRTF instruments adapted to fit UKIRT instead. But that’s planning for you. Meanwhile, there are Hawaiians who think the proper number of telescopes should be “none.”