NASA Opposes Lithium Mining at Ancient Nevada Lakebed, Says Land Is Vital to Calibrate Satellites

Exploration drilling continues for Permitting Lithium Nevada Corp.'s Thacker Pass Project on the site between Orovada and Kings Valley, in Humboldt County, Nev., shown beyond a driller's shovels in the distance, Sept. 13, 2018. Suzanne Featherston/The Daily Free Press via AP

NASA opposes lithium mining at an ancient Nevada lakebed site used to calibrate satellites, as federal officials have blocked mining in the heart of Nevada’s Railroad Valley.

The agency says the site is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead.

At NASA’s request, the Bureau of Land Management has declared that 36 square miles of the roughly 90-square-mile lakebed are no longer available for exploration and mining.

Railroad Valley is large, flat, barren, uniform in color, generally free of clouds, and has remained unchanged over the past three decades, making it the best site in the United States for satellite calibration, according to NASA.

Dozens of tribe members and other protesters beating drums and waving signs rally in front of the federal courthouse in Reno, Nev., on Jan. 5, 2023, as a court hearing began over a lawsuit seeking to block a huge lithium mine planned near the Nevada-Oregon line about 200 miles north of Reno. Scott Sonner/AP Photo

“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 northeast of Las Vegas.

For nearly three decades, this expansive piece of land above the untapped lithium deposit in Nevada’s Railroad Valley has been utilized by NASA to ensure accurate measurements, essential for maintaining the optimal functioning of satellites and their diverse applications.

“Activities that stand to disrupt the surface integrity of Railroad Valley would risk making the site unusable,” said Jeremy Eggers, a spokesman for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA says the satellites “provide vital and often time-critical information touching every aspect of life on Earth.”

Problems With ‘Green’ Energy Projects

Lithium is the main component in batteries for electric vehicles.

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) introduced legislation to reverse BLM’s withdrawal of the mining area from the Railroad Valley area and told a House subcommittee that the decision underscores the “hypocrisy” of President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Railroad Valley is home to an abundance of critical minerals that can help boost the American economy, strengthen domestic supply chains, and reduce our dependence on foreign adversaries,“ Amodei said in a statement. ”That’s why it was especially disappointing that the Administration opted to close the door on this mineral development by approving NASA’s unreasonable demand for exclusive control over the playa in Railroad Valley—even though these proposed mining projects would not impact NASA’s mission in the area.”

In another project near the Fort McDermitt Reservation along the border of Nevada and Oregon, the Biden administration plans to build Thacker Pass mine, which will be one of the largest lithium mines in the world, near the tribal land of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe.

Daranda Hinkey, 25, is a member of the tribe and leader of a group known as People of Red Mountain. The group says the Thacker Pass mine would desecrate a site where the U.S. Cavalry massacred their ancestors after the Civil War, in addition to the potential environmental impacts.

“Lithium mines and this whole push for renewable energy—the agenda of the Green New Deal—is what I like to call green colonialism,“ Hinkey said. “It will directly affect my people, my culture, my religion, my tradition, my children, and children after that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.