The design and construction of the observatory for the FLYEYE telescopes

The identification, classification, and monitoring of Near-Earth Objects (NEO) is of detrimental importance for the implementation of the Space Safety Program (S2P) supported by the European Space Agency. The Near-Earth Object Survey TELescope (NEOSTEL, also known as “Flyeye”), represents a key-element of S2P: its role consists in providing a real-time monitoring system from ground of potential impactors, generating an early-warning signal with a maximum delay of three days from detection to the alert generation. As a by-product, the system is capable of detecting, classifying and monitoring space debris, contributing to the implementation of strategies for collision avoidance. Due to the peculiarities of the “Flyeye” telescope, and in virtue of the service availability that must be guaranteed to perform the required observational schedule, the hosting astronomical observatory shall comply to specific and tight requirements. On the observatory side, the telescope combines the observational capability of sixteen cameras, capable of generating the map of the entire accessible sky four times per observing night. Data must then be stored, pre-processed and made available for the generation of the alerts. The rotating dome is also subject to strict requirements, since the combination of fast telescope slewing and equatorial mount configuration makes the requests to the enclosure rotational velocity extremely demanding. Furthermore, the system shall be deployed into much different sites, to guarantee 24/7 global service availability, making compliance to the varying environmental conditions extremely impacting on the design. In this paper we present the results of the optimized layout of the observatory, with a description of the main technical tradeoff.