An international team of engineers and scientists are breaking ground on a mountaintop in Chile for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).
According to BBC News, the U.S.-led project includes partners from Australia, Brazil, Korea, and of course Chile, the nation hosting the telescope. The GMT will sit atop Cerro Las Campanas.
Scientists hope to one day use the GMT to search for dark matter, material invisible to telescopes that makes up a majority of the universe. The GMT will also aid in the search for potentially habitable exoplants as well as the oldest objects in the cosmos.
"We are thrilled to be breaking ground on the Giant Magellan Telescope site at such an exciting time for astronomy," Taft Armandroff, board chair and director of the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a news release. "With its unprecedented size and resolving power, the Giant Magellan Telescope will allow current and future generations of astronomers to continue the journey of cosmic discovery."
The GMT will also be able to capture images with a resolution up to 10 times clearer than what the Hubble Telescope is capable of.
"It's relatively limited information," Patrick McCarthy, vice president of the Giant Magellan Telescope Corporation, told NBC News. "It can't tell you how massive a planet is or what it's made of. A large telescope on the ground can tell you all of that information."
Project managers hope to have the GMT ready for operation by 2021.
"An enormous amount of work has gone into the design phase of the Project and development of the giant mirrors that are the heart of the telescope," McCarthy said in the release. "The highest technical risks have been retired, and we are looking forward to bringing the components of the telescope together on the mountain top."
