Flyeye telescope

As part of the global effort to spot risky celestial objects such as asteroids and comets, ESA is developing a network of automated telescopes for nightly sky surveys. The ‘Flyeye-1’ telescope is the first in a future network that would scan the entire sky and automatically identify possible new near-Earth objects (NEOs) for follow up and later checking by human astronomers.

The Flyeye telescopes are named for their novel design that splits incoming light into separate channels in a similar manner to the compound eye of a fly, to expand the telescope’s field of view.

The development of the first-generation ‘Flyeye-1’ telescope began in 2016, when ESA signed a contract with a European consortium led by OHB Italy.

Inside the telescope, a single mirror collects the light from the full field of view and feeds it into a pyramid-shaped beam splitter with 16 facets that divides it into 16 separate tubes. The secondary lenses inside these tubes focus the light onto individual cameras, subdividing a region of the sky into 16 smaller images to expand the telescope's field of view.

The Flyeye-1 telescope has a diameter of 1 m and a field of view of 45 square degrees, where 1 square degree covers an area in the sky roughly four times as large as the Moon as seen from Earth. Telescopes of this size typically have a much smaller field of view.

The telescope will undergo final testing and validation at the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) Centre for Space Geodesy in the city of Matera, Italy, in late 2024 and early 2025. Once complete, Flyeye-1 will be transported to the island of Sicily, Italy, for installation at a dedicated observatory near the top of Monte Mufara mountain.

The site and access road required for the construction of the observatory was made available by ASI. Construction began in June 2024 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, in time for the telescope’s arrival.