The first Maunakea telescope to be decommissioned has been completely removed, and the site has been restored as of July 1.

The Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, or CSO, has been disassembled and is now sitting in shipping containers awaiting relocation to its new home in Chile.

The CSO came online in 1987 and has been used by researchers, including more than 200 students, before ceasing operations in 2015.

CSO Director Sunil Golwala said the decommissioning process was a bit of a challenge because it had not been done before.

"The decommissioning plan states some high-level guidelines for how it should be done, but then there are choices about which parts you do in which order, what types of information should be included so when we actually got to writing the site decommissioning plan, which was the major document that we submitted, that moved fairly quickly," Golwala said.

"So, I think we’ve hopefully defined a process that will make it clear in the future, because now it's sort of clear what order you do the steps, what information you need in order to do the site decommissioning plan, and then what’s the sequence after that in terms of the environmental assessment and conservation district use permit."

CSO is the first of five Maunakea telescopes set to be decommissioned in exchange for the planned construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

Golwala said the Center for Maunakea Stewardship and the Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority still have to sign off on the project.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Hōkū Keʻa Observatory is also in the decommissioning process.