Genesis Capsule Crashes; Chutes Blamed 656
Cyclotron_Boy writes "The Genesis probe (reported here) has crashed to the ground, near a road in the Utah desert. The stunt chopper pilots were not to blame, though. The drogue chute didn't open on re-entry. NASA TV is covering it currently. The choppers have landed near the probe, but no word yet as to the condition of the space dust." Many readers have also pointed to CNN's coverage. Update: 09/08 16:39 GMT by J : MSNBC has more coverage and a sad photo of the half-buried capsule: "The capsule broke open on impact. It was not yet clear whether the $260 million Genesis mission was ruined."
Failure timeline (Score:5, Informative)
* Starting about 1045 GMT, the spacecraft spins itself up to 10 revolutions per minute. The spinning will provide the unguided sample return capsule with additional stability during entry. The spacecraft then rotates to the proper orientation for release and spins up to 15 revolutions per minute.
* Genesis will be stabilize with its nose down because of the location of its center of gravity, its spin rate and its aerodynamic shape.
* About 45 seconds after entry interface, the capsule will be exposed to a deceleration force three times the force of Earth gravity, or 3 G's. This arms a timer that is started when the deceleration force passes back down through 3 G's. All of the parachute releases are initiated from this timer.
* After one minute of atmospheric descent, the capsule should be at an altitude of 197,000 feet [...] Slightly over 10 seconds later, the capsule will be exposed to about 30 G's, the greatest deceleration it will endure during Earth entry.
* 1554 GMT (11:54 a.m. EDT)
The capsule has been spotted high over the planet!
* 1557 GMT (11:57 a.m. EDT)
The capsule appears to be tumbling!
* 1557 GMT (11:57 a.m. EDT)
The Genesis sample return capule is rapidly tumbling with no chute.
* 1558 GMT (11:58 a.m. EDT)
IMPACT! The capsule has slammed into the Utah desert after failing to deploy its chutes and parafoil.
* 1604 GMT (12:04 p.m. EDT)
Mission control says without the drogue chute and subsequent parafoil, the capsule would hit the ground at about 100 mph.
* 1610 GMT (12:10 p.m. EDT)
Recovery forces are moving toward the capsule, which has made a very spectacular crater.
(Disclaimer: I posted this in the pre-impact discussion as well.)
According to Nasa TV... (Score:5, Informative)
Possible Cause (Score:5, Informative)
There was some concern that the sample return capsule battery would fail, jeopardizing the re-entry. The battery was overheating, but ground tests have shown that the battery should be unaffected by the amount of heating it has endured, and should operate to deploy the parachute on reentry.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=2001-034A [nasa.gov]
I'm sad now... (Score:1, Informative)
At least this foley didn't kill anyone, or hurt any property to my knowledge. Hope we still get some data. If not at least we have a crater.
Space.com coverage (Score:2, Informative)
Space.com [space.com] is carrying this story [space.com] about the Genesis return capsule that returned to Earth today in a big way. I guess there won't be any trophies for the stunt pilots.
Re:Genesis Failed (Score:2, Informative)
Wasn't Dr. Carol Marcus the actual head of the Genesis project?
Press conference (Score:3, Informative)
Possible Cause... (Score:5, Informative)
There was some concern that the sample return capsule battery would fail, jeopardizing the re-entry. The battery was overheating, but ground tests have shown that the battery should be unaffected by the amount of heating it has endured, and should operate to deploy the parachute on reentry.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=2001-034A [nasa.gov]
Re:Failure timeline (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who? (Score:4, Informative)
Vertigo is a small business that specializes in the development and rapid prototyping of advanced aeronautical and civil structures from inflatable shelters to parachute delivery systems to spacecraft deceleration systems. Vertigo will provide two mid-air retrieval, winch-based systems to mount in two Genesis retrieval helicopters. Vertigo is lead on the mid-air recovery flight operations. Helicopter crew provided by Vertigo are: Roy Haggard - Lead Director of Flight Operations Myles Elsing - Wing Director of Flight Operations Brian Johnson - Lead Payload Master Lynn Fogleman - Wing Payload Master The Vertigo Program Manager is Brook Norton.
Sad... (Score:3, Informative)
This daring retrieval method will protect the samples and sensitive instruments during reentry. A crash landing, even at the capsule's relatively slow speed of 9 mph, could ruin some of the data collected during the mission.
Considering the fact that it hit the ground at about a 100mph, when a crash landing at even 9mph was considered dangerous, it is very likely that most of the instrumentation and data is ruined.
Hopefully the canisters (or the like) containing the samples survived the ride. The helicopter "snatch" strategy sounded hit-and-go to me anyway, but then I'm just an ignorant computer scientist.
Re:The disturbing thing.... (Score:5, Informative)
It's perfectly feasable
Re:Lat/Long of impact (geocaching opportunity?) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:According to Nasa TV... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about Genesis in particular, but many modern space probes use small Pu-238 particles as heaters. Since the heat is actually generated by radioactivity, there is no power draw, and no way to turn the thing off.
Understatement of the Day (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong mission -- Genesis doesn't use aerogel (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong mission. You are thinking of Stardust, [nasa.gov] which will return samples from a comet.
Genesis allowed solar wind particles to slam into polished slabs of metal; some of the particles stick and can be recovered afterwards.
Re:Space.com coverage (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hilarity ensued. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Space dust... (Score:2, Informative)
1) leave probe in orbit
- Kinda hard to analyse up there.
2) Catch it with a shuttle
- The same shuttle done in by a few pounds of foam?
- half a billion dollars to catch a capsule?
3) have it cruise past the ISS
- If it cruises past the ISS, where will it go? You'd have to decelerate it, and put it in the correct orbit (incline, velocity, altitude). Not impossible, but you would easily double the cost of the probe.
Returning capsules is an old, well understood process. Even catching things in midair is an old hat (how do you think the old spy satellites returned their payloads?). But nothing is foolproof. Parts are not 100% reliable.
routine for film spy satellites (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Failure timeline (Score:4, Informative)
Too bad I don't have cable, I'd have loved to have this on my Replay, to show you some caps of the sequence.
BTW, I did catch the LAT/LON, they said it was 40 07 40 and 113 30 29, that would actually show up in China. If you say -113 instead of +113, you get a location in the Deseret Test Center. Here's a Mapquest map [mapquest.com]. They also said it was "just north of the road." Of course, they could have accidentally or deliberately been a bit off on their coordinates, but this is what they said.
Re:Pictures of it happening? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not use a shuttle? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, but then the cost would have been closer to $1B instead of $260M.
I'm sure their second attempt (total cost including $260M attempt still under $600M) will be better.
Re:Failure timeline (Score:3, Informative)
Of course the time is critical - I seem to recall reading that the total entry to main deploy is only about 3 minutes, and a 10-second error (from clock, or equivalent tracking errors) would make a *huge* difference.
Brett
It pretty standard (Score:5, Informative)
It is preferable to have a spacecraft auger into the dirt, than have a parchute deploy on launch and possibly pulled the launch vehicle into a populated area.
Re:Andromeda Strain? (Score:1, Informative)
I'm not sure what you're complaining about. This is almost exactly how the story starts...
Problem Suspected! (Score:1, Informative)
The battery affects the capsule's re-entry into the atmosphere. If it fails, scientists might not get their hands on solar wind particles.
This was a typical NASA mission. NASA is not the premier science/engineering organization anymore.
Maybe selling the particle catchers for jewelry can be profitable!
Re:Failure timeline (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Failure timeline (Score:5, Informative)
Re:routine for film spy satellites (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Failure timeline (Score:3, Informative)
Close. They did mid-air snags of the Corona's film capsule with C-119 (The Flying Boxcar).
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~kclarke/Corona/story2
The capsules had a nifty lil device to thwart recovery by the Russians should the aircraft miss and it dropped into the ocean. A salt plug in the capsule would dissolve after a period of immersion and it would sink.
Re:Failure timeline (Score:5, Informative)
Once you have passed into an area of denser atmopsphere, radio communication becomes possible again. The Apollo, if we use that as a guide for where parachutes would typically be deployed, deployed its chute at about 25,000 feet (about 7.6 km). The ionosphere starts at about 260,000 feet (about 80 km). Now I'm not saying that parachutes wouldn't be deployed higher for something trying to land on land, but not ten times higher....
Just my $0.02.
Re:OK, so now what? Repurcussions? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:really sad day (Score:2, Informative)
This spacecraft was launched in 2001... and was designed at the hight (and arguably the decline) of "faster cheaper better".
In 1999 we Lost Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander, which reshaped the way NASA did business... Problem was, they already had this craft designed and ready to build, money was committed, etc, so they could look at redesigning things, but for the most part those designs could not alter it signifigantly, or the craft would have visited the Smithsonian, not the Sun.
Secondly the re-entry design based itself on tested technologies, so they would have not placed as much emphasis on the deployment of the chute, but rater the unfirling of the parasail chute (Not as tested, and to my knowledge, NEVER tested on a space mission)... Pyros are very reliable, but they do fail... Mariner 3 was a victim of such a failure. My guess is one of the pyros failed, or it shorted the circut board when it fired, and as a result, the chute diddn't open.
If you saw the Tomes of engineering paperwork required to build such a craft, you'd be surprised what considerations are taken and how mechanically complex these craft can be considering their minute size.
The engineers at JPL are some of the most brilliant gearheads out there, but despite that they are human, and for sure, there's always a better way to do something... Problem is, you don't know its wrong until it shows itself to be wrong. If it worked before, it was "good", right?
Maybe not, but that's Murphy's Law, not Gov't bloat.
Re:NASA vs. ESA, Quake II-style... (Score:2, Informative)
(Beagle2 was not the second mission in a series - it was named after a famous other ship that went on a voyage of discovery.)
Try nasawatch.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Velocity at Impact Question for you Engineers.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My only question... (Score:4, Informative)
Keep in mind that more backup systems also require extra weight during lanuch (and that is dead payload weight that must be accounted for the entire mission). That is not as cheap as you indicate, plus you have to have extra systems to deal with those redundant systems, testing equipment, and the possibility that the extra parachutes might prematurely detonate deploying while it was in solar orbit during the collection phase...not something you would particularly care for in that position. I dare you to take your little garage remote into space, keep it there for many years exposed to solar flares, and have it get triggered exactly on schedule after communications blackout due to reentry. I don't think that remote would make it.
Still, the parachute deployment should be something that NASA has plenty of experience at doing. The only really unique aspect of this mission was the retreval before it hit the ground.