Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com June 26 Environmentalists, tribal leaders and others have been fighting lithium mining companies in Nevada for years, AP reported. Recently, however, NASA, which seems to have nothing to do with this matter, has joined the opposition camp, saying that mining lithium mines will affect satellite calibration.

Nevada's ancient lake beds are rich in lithium, one of the key minerals needed to produce clean electricity and combat global warming. However, NASA recently said that the table-top flat Kuangqu has long been an important base for the agency to calibrate satellites, and its sparsely populated, flat and open nature has allowed NASA to monitor and calibrate hundreds of satellites for three decades to ensure proper operation of their related functions.

At NASA's request, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw 36 square miles (CTOnews.com notes: about 92 square kilometers) of land from its federal list of potential mineral exploration and mining, all located in the open Kuangqu railway valley in eastern Nevada.

NASA stressed that satellite calibration in Railway Valley is critical to gathering information transmitted from space, which is widely used in fields ranging from weather forecasting to national security, agricultural forecasting and natural disasters, and satellites "provide important and often time-critical information in all aspects." NASA has calibrated more than 250 satellites since 2016.

Carson City, Nevada, company 3 Proton Lithium, which owns most of the mining rights to the Railway Valley lithium mine, has said it has conducted extensive research to predict that lithium resources will be exploited in a brine extraction manner that will not have any impact on the landscape, but NASA insists that such risks should not be taken because there is no other place in the United States where satellite calibration can be carried out.

Nevada Republican lawmakers who support the mining company have proposed to Congress to cancel the land withdrawal order and regain mining rights. The lithium mine is said to be among the top ten in the world, and its economic value is self-evident given the rapid development of new energy vehicles.

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