About

In this blog you can follow updates from the LIME team of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) team at the Hayabusa Re-Entry observing campaign led by NASA and SETI. Hayabusa is a Japanese led space mission where a space craft traveled a distance as far as the Mars orbit to obtain a samples of the Itokawa astroid. It is the first mission where a space craft not only has contact with an asteroid, but then returns back to earth. Because Itokawa is so far away the observation will be very special: the space craft will have a very high velocity (12.2 km/s) at the time of re-entry.

Christina Giannopapa and Bart Janssen, will be using the TERAS high speed camera to register Hayabusa's return into the earth's atmosphere. This high-speed, high-resolution imagery will complement the other observations by providing clear detail of individual fragments without suffering from oversaturation of the brightest fragments. This proved very useful in a previous mission. After the mission they will be assisted by LIME's Bas van der Linden in further analysis and processing of the data.

LIME is a major centre in the Netherlands for mathematical consultancy to companies, aiming at carrying out relevant research and educational projects for mutual benefit, on a commercial basis. LIME is an institute of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Eindhoven University of Technology. As LIME is embedded in the Eindhoven University of Technology, it has access to a broad field of academic expertise