NEOSTEL: the first innovative observatory for the FlyEye Telescopes

The Near-Earth Object Survey TELescope (NEOSTEL, also known as “FlyEye”), is a survey telescope developed in the framework of the Space Safety Program (S2P) of the European Space Agency. S2P includes either space based assets abd ground based assets: the role of NEOSTEL consists in providing a real-time atmospheric impact monitoring system from ground, generating an early-warning signal with a maximum delay of three days from detection to the alert generation. A first unit of this innovative telescope will be installed in Italy, on top of the Monte Mufara, within the “Madonie” Natural Park, Sicily region. The detection capabilities and the quality of service required by NEOSTEL pose new challenges to the design and construction of the dome and the observatory. In particular, the combination of fast telescope slewing and equatorial mount configuration makes the requests to the enclosure rotation extremely demanding. The site orography imposes an optimization of the entire observatory, to minimize the environmental impact of the observatory, while providing at the same time all the infrastructural elements which are necessary to operate and maintain the telescope. In this paper we present the first results of the optimized layout of the observatory, a description of the facility and in particular we outline the main technical characteristics of the dome and of the maintenance equipment.