Amateur astronomy opportunity with ATV-5 entry in Feb 2015

[gary]

NASA is looking for help with ATV-5’s ballistic path.
The Georges Lemaître ATV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre_ATV), or Automated Transfer Vehicle 5 (ATV-5), is a European unmanned cargo resupply spacecraft.
Here is an excerpt from the NASA engineer, Jack Bacon, who is in charge of the observation.

[gary]

The ATV-5 shallow re-entry observing campaign web site :-
http://atv5.seti.org/

An impressive range of assets and instruments to make various observations
of the re-entry including the NASA DC-8 Airborne Laboratory.
http://atv5.seti.org/participants.html

ESA ATV-5 web site :-
http://blogs.esa.int/atv/

[deanm]

"the only controlled reentry of a large spacecraft in some time to come."

Don't tell SpaceX: on Saturday, they're doing a (controlled!) Dragon capsule de-orbit from ISS & recovery splash-down (not burn-up, like ATV).

Currently the only means to return (intact) significant quantities of stuff from ISS.

Dean