• Forum
• SITREP
• Military
• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security

• Space

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Public Eye

08 September 2004

NASA Genesis Capsule Crashes on the Utah Desert Floor

Scientists do not know if solar wind samples survived impact

By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The NASA Genesis capsule, carrying samples of solar wind particles, crash landed and broke apart in the desert of west-central Utah September 8, according to a press briefing at the Michael Army Air Field at the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.

Just after the crash, in a NASA TV broadcast of the event, Chris Jones of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said, "In the early morning hours, the Genesis spacecraft delivered the capsule with pinpoint accuracy. The targeting was beyond our wildest dreams." Delivery to that point was accurate.

Then something went wrong aboard the capsule itself, he said, perhaps with the parafoil or the drogue parachute, which was supposed to deploy at 33 kilometers over the U.S. Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range. Two helicopters had been waiting below to snare the parachute and carry the capsule safely to the ground.

"[The capsule] is on the ground," he said. "We're trying to make a visual assessment of the capsule before [scientists] make any attempt to approach it. We need to make sure it's safe before they can [remove it from the landing site] and begin the investigation.

The scientific theory that gave rise to the three-year Genesis mission suggests that by retrieving and studying solar wind particles -- believed to resemble the interstellar dust, gas and ice from which all bodies in our solar system evolved -- scientists may find illuminating clues yielding greater insight into planetary formation and diversity.

To successfully capture raw solar wind, Genesis flew a million miles away, outside Earth's magnetic field, which alters the particles, and hovered in its own orbit for 29 months.

The capsule -- which carried NASA's first sample return since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972, and the first material collected beyond the moon -- contains hexagonal-wafers of pure silicon, gold, sapphire, diamond and other materials that hold samples of solar wind particles. These wafers spent more than 26 months in space.

According to a NASA fact sheet, if the capsule descends all the way to the ground, some of the wafers might fracture or break away from their mountings. NASA scientists do not yet know if the wafers survived the impact.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2004&m=September&x=20040908151824lcnirellep0.7578089&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html