On the way to Mars, Neil Scheibelhut stopped by Walmart for mouthwash and dental floss. “We’re picking up some last-minute things,” he said via cellphone last Wednesday afternoon from the store.

After years of planning, construction of the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has started in Hawaii. This gigantic next-generation telescope will provide astronomers with unparalleled power — about 10 times the resolution of Hubble — to observe the intricacies of the universe from the comfort of Earth. However, its location atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano has some local residents up in arms. It’s a case of the age-old clash of tradition with scientific progress.

Henry Jolicoeur is a retired French Canadian hypnotherapist and a glass-products importer who enjoys making very low-budget documentary films. In the summer of 2012, Jolicoeur read that Larry Ellison, a founder of the Silicon Valley giant Oracle and the fifth-richest man in the world, had bought 97 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai — not a 97 percent stake in some kind of company, but 97 percent of the physical place. Jolicoeur was curious, so he booked a flight and packed his camera.

Hawaii residents were furiously stocking up on essentials as two hurricanes churned toward the islands Wednesday and weather officials asked the whole state to prepare for flash flooding.

Hawaii has a bird problem. They keep crashing into power lines and dying. While that's not so grim when pigeons are involved, the situation gets more serious when the birds are endangered. And many of the species in Hawaii are. That's why they're busting out the lasers.

Plastic trash has always been a huge environmental problem, especially when the ocean is involved. But few states have seen the impact of maritime pollution quite like Hawaii. Now, Hawaii has become the first state to officially implement a ban on plastic bags at checkout counters. "Being a marine state, perhaps, we are exposed more directly to the impacts of plastic pollution and the damage it does to our environment," Sierra Club of Hawaii director Robert Harris, said in 2012.

Plans for the construction of the largest telescope in the world moved ahead this week as the University of Hawaii’s Board of Regents approved the lease of school land atop the dormant Mauna Kea volcano on Hawaii, the largest of the eight Hawaiian Islands. The board’s vote was a near-unanimous 15-1.

A man fishing from a kayak off a Hawaiian island has died after being bitten by a shark, authorities said Monday. The incident was the latest in an alarming spate of shark attacks in the state this year.