The ASTRI Program

Abstract

The ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) program was born as a collaborative international effort led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) to design and realize, within the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) framework, an end-to-end prototype of the Small-Sized Telescope (SST) in a dual-mirror configuration (2M). While the activities concerning the characterization of the prototype are under completion, the program entered a new phase. With the final aim of contributing at the production of the SST telescopes for the CTAO Southern site, we started the development of nine telescopes based on the evolution of the ASTRI prototype design to work as pathfinder for the CTAO. Furthermore, together with the CHEC (Compact High Energy Camera) collaboration, the ASTRI team presented a proposal, that will be evaluated with other proposals, to deliver to CTAO the complete set of SST telescopes.