The proposed site is considered sacred to indigenous Hawaiians.
From Prelims Point of view:
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT):
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a proposed astronomical observatory with an extremely large telescope (ELT).
It is an international project being funded by scientific organisations of Canada, China, India, Japan and USA.
Planned location: Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii in the US state of Hawaii.
The TMT is designed for near-ultraviolet to mid-infrared observations, featuring adaptive optics to assist in correcting image blur.
TMT will enable scientists to study fainter objects far away from us in the Universe, which gives information about early stages of evolution of the Universe
It will give us finer details of not-so-far-away objects like undiscovered planets and other objects in the Solar System and planets around other stars.