A Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8 G ED VR lens! Click the image to get a feeling of how large it is. Needless to say this piece of equipment is pretty expensive. We therefore took it as hand luggage to the US. This lens was lent to us by Lambda-X, an expert company in optical instruments. They are currently developing an even faster camera than the one we use during this mission. Hopefully we will use it in the future!
After the usual US border control we spent a little time at customs to make sure the lens will make it back to Eindhoven.
Arrival in the US did not exactly mean rest for us. We immediately went on to Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility (DOAF) to get security clearance and get started to install the new lens. This involved drilling some extra holes in the camera holder, setting up the RAID array, etc. After doing quite some work we left the NASA facility for our hotel (where we still had to check in) leaving the camera setup like this:
