The New Greek Telescope project of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) was funded by the European Commission and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Hellenic Ministry of Development.

[2] The telescope, built by Carl Zeiss AG, has a Ritchey-Chrétien configuration with a primary mirror with a diameter of 2.3 m. At the main f/8 Cassegrain focus, the corrected field of view is approximately one degree, with a plate scale of 1.17 arcsec/mm.

The Aristarchos telescope has made quite a few observations under ORP awarded time, like a stellar occultation of Neptune's moon Triton and a transit of exoplanet WASP-12b.

[3] All the activities concerning optical, quantum, and deep space communications carried out at the Chelmos Observatory are identified by project HOTSPOT.

The plan is for a high-powered laser to be fired from the nearby Kryoneri Observatory and the Aristarchos telescope is going to receive the spacecraft's response.