The Sicilian TAR stops the construction of the Flyeye telescope

It is not a stop, but it is close. In any case, environmentalists score a point in their favour in the battle started against the construction on Mount Mufara, on the Madonie Mountains in the province of Palermo (in the territory of the municipality of Isnello) of Esa's Flyeye telescope for planetary defence (intended to detect asteroids threatening the Earth). The first effect concerns the laying of the telescope's foundation stone: set for Friday 6 September in the presence of, among others, Minister Adolfo Urso and Sicilian Regional President Renato Schifani, it will be postponed. And other cascading effects are feared after the ruling of the first section of the Sicilian Regional Administrative Court in Palermo, which granted the request for precautionary and urgent measures presented by the environmental associations and ordered the suspension of the work in progress "in full protection zone A of the Madonie park," reads a note by the Italian Alpine Club, Legambiente Sicilia, Lipu and WWF Sicilia. The associations had filed an urgent petition after the start on 27 August last, 'in the absence of certain opinions and authorisations' of the works: 'excavations of the protected site, 3,540 cubic metres of building volume, a building more than 13 metres above ground level, a surface area of 800 square metres, the construction of a new carriage road for access to the mountain's integral summit and a car park to serve the observatory'.

The Flyeye telescope is the first unit of a global network of telescopes for monitoring Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) developed by Esa's Space Security Programme: the Flyeye telescopes continuously scan the sky during the night, automatically identifying potential dangerous near-Earth objects, also referred to as Neo, thus enabling early warnings to be provided in the event of potential danger. Also expected on the Madonie were Josef Aschbacher, director general of Esa, and Teodoro Valente, president of the Italian Space Agency.

The Regional Administrative Court also granted the preliminary investigation request submitted by the environmental associations to acquire a series of documents from all the bodies involved. For the Italian Alpine Club, Legambiente Sicilia, Lipu and WWF Sicilia, "the procedure followed so far has been characterised by procedural forcing and non-compliance with certain rules". The Sicilian Regional Administrative Court considered "the numerous profiles of illegitimacy deduced against the challenged acts to be worthy of in-depth examination in the appropriate collegial forum", considering "the prevailing interest in the environmental protection of the site, in terms of maintaining its current integrity in the short period of time elapsing until the hearing of the precautionary petition, as opposed to a brief postponement of the execution of the work, which is still in its initial stage and for which there is no specific urgency in the records". The council chamber for the collegial treatment of the precautionary petition has been set for 24 September next.

Minister Urso's reaction was prompt: 'We hope that the strategic interest of the FlyEye observatory will be recognised by the Sicilian administrative judiciary as soon as possible,' he said, 'to avoid the risk of the European Space Agency having second thoughts about the most suitable location for the observatory, with inevitable repercussions on other projects currently being assigned to our country.

The project, which is considered to be of great international importance, has already experienced such a conspicuous delay in the relevant local authorisations that last year the European Space Agency suggested moving it to an alternative site in the Canary Islands, which would be willing to host it without any problems.