Spain offers 400 million euros to revive Thirty Meter Telescope as Trump suggests cancelling project

On Wednesday (July 23), Diana Morant, the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities in Spain, announced the Spanish government will offer a maximum of 400 million euros ($471 million) to save the Thirty Meter Telescope — a massive astronomy observation facility facing possible cancellation due to budget constraints in the U.S.

Originally, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) was planned to adorn a mountain in Hawaii called Mauna Kea. This is a very popular observing site because of how strikingly dark its skies are and how great the weather tends to be; indeed, it already is home to several other large, ground-based telescopes like the Keck Observatory and the Very Long Baseline Array. However, the TMT's development has been riding a bumpy road, and the biggest challenge came recently: The Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 (FY26) budget proposal for the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is funding the TMT's design and development work, requests removing that funding altogether.

As a result, the Spanish government has offered up its sizeable sum of money with the hopes that the TMT can be moved to the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands and continue construction there.

"If completed, it will involve not only the construction of the telescope, but also decades of scientific operations, the creation of skilled employment and an economic and social boost for the island," Morant said.

Trump's FY26 NSF budget request actually isn't the first time the TMT has been subjected to whispers of a halt. Even before Trump took office, the NSF was facing pressure from the U.S. government to build only one giant, ground-based telescope with a budget capped at $1.6 billion — this was a worry because there are already two giant telescopes in the works. One is the TMT, and the other is known as the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) that's being built in the clear-skied deserts of Chile.

They were meant to work in tandem, with the GMT watching over the Southern Hemisphere while the TMT watches the Northern Hemisphere. They also have complementary skillsets. So, slap their observations together and astronomers believed that'd paint a beautiful picture of the night sky in its totality.

Trump's NSF budget request for the upcoming year specifically states the GMT can move forward to the "final design phase," but the TMT cannot. However, it also states that "NSF has received assurances from the GMT project that it can complete the final design phase without further investments. Moving into the final design phase does not guarantee that a project will be approved for construction, and doing so does not obligate the agency to provide any further funding."