The CTA+ program, approved by the Italian Ministry as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, is fully funded with €53 million by the European Union (“Next Generation EU”, CUP: C53C22000430006). The CTA+ group at OAR leads the entire project management (Project Office) and the construction—especially the mounts—of two next-generation LSTs for the CTAO southern site. These telescopes, with a 23-meter primary mirror, are the largest Cherenkov telescopes in the array, ideal for observing the lowest-energy gamma-ray events.
A key contribution also comes from the group’s technology/experimental division, which fully designs and develops (mechanically, in hardware, and software) the Camera Calibration Box for photomultiplier calibration and the Illuminator for monitoring the wavelength-dependent degradation of the optical path in all CTAO-S telescopes.