At Sweden's request, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on December 29 calling for experts to examine all "new information" related to the diplomat's death in southern Africa on a peace mission to the Congo.
The three-person panel of experts will be lead by Mohamed Chande Othman of Tanzania, a former chief prosecutor of the international tribunal for Rwanda.
Assisting him will be Kerryn Macaulay, Australia's representative to the Organization of International Civil Aviation, and by Henrik Ejrup Larsen, a ballistics expert with the Danish police.
They will "review and assess the probative value of the information provided to the secretary-general by the Hammarskjold Commission as well as any relevant records or information released by member states or by other sources," said UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.
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Hammarskjold, the UN's second secretary-general, died at age 56 when his DC-6 crashed near Ndola, in northern Rhodesia, now known as Zambia.
He was on his way to negotiate a ceasefire in the newly independent Congo and was to meet with Moise Tshombe, the leader of the province of Katanga, which had seceded from the Congo and proclaimed its independence.
Witnesses questioned by the commission spoke of the presence of another aircraft that fired on the DC-6.
The commission, which was composed of jurists and diplomats, also asked the US National Security Agency to provide access to recordings it may have of conversations in the plane's cockpit and radio messages that the crew may have made in 1961.
Until now, that material has been classified as "secret.