The Near Earth Object Survey TELescope (NEOSTEL, also known as “FlyEye”), is a survey telescope developed in the framework of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program of the European Space Agency. NEOSTEL is dedicated to the detection of Near-Earth Objects sized 40m, and it is designed to provide 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, in order to minimize the environmental impact of the infrastructure, 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 infrastructure, a description of the facility and in particular we outline the main technical characteristics of the dome and of the maintenance equipment.
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