The Dutch marriage between astronomy and high-tech systems engineering

The Netherlands plays a prominent and long-standing role in astronomy. This is due in part to the Dutch expertise in systems engineering, precision optomechanics, mechatronics and control engineering. Dutch high-tech engineering companies and research institutes are active in the ongoing developments involved for each step in bringing an electromagnetic signal (photon, radio wave, etc.) from outer space to a detector. This Mikroniek article presents an overview and concludes with a number of highlights. (Image courtesy of TNO / Bert Dekker)