NASA Opposes Lithium Mining at Nevada Desert Site Used to Calibrate Satellites

An ancient Nevada lakebed could become a vast source of the lithium used in electric car batteries, reports the Associated Press. But "NASA says the same site - flat as a tabletop and undisturbed like none other in the Western Hemisphere - is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead."At the space agency's request, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw 36 square miles (92 square kilometers) of the eastern Nevada terrain from its inventory of federal lands open to potential mineral exploration and mining. NASA says the long, flat piece of land above the untapped lithium deposit in Nevada's Railroad Valley has been used for nearly three decades to get measurements just right to keep satellites and their applications functioning properly. "No other location in the United States is suitable for this purpose," the Bureau of Land Management concluded in April after receiving NASA's input on the tract 250 miles (400 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas... In Railroad Valley, satellite calculations are critical to gathering information beamed from space with widespread applications from weather forecasting to national security, agricultural outlooks and natural disasters, according to NASA, which said the satellites "provide vital and often time-critical information touching every aspect of life on Earth." That increasingly includes certifying measurements related to climate change. Thus the Nevada desert paradox, critics say. Although lithium is the main ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles key to reducing greenhouse gases, in this case the metal is buried beneath land NASA says must remain undisturbed to certify the accuracy of satellites monitoring Earth's warming atmosphere... The area's unchanged nature has allowed NASA to establish a long record of images of the undisturbed topography to assist precise measurement of distances using the travel time of radio signals and assure "absolute radiometric calibration" of sensors on board satellites. "Activities that stand to disrupt the surface integrity of Railroad Valley would risk making the site unusable," Jeremy Eggers, a spokesman for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told The Associated Press. One company with most of the mining rights says the tract's withdrawal will put more than half the site's value out of reach, according to the article. But the Associated Press got a supportive quote for the move from the satellite imaging company Planet Labs, which has relied on NASA's site to calibrate more than 250 of its satellites since 2016. "As our nation becomes ever more impacted by an evolving and changing environment, it is critical to have reliable and accurate data and imagery of our planet."

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