NASA Recovers Genesis

zjango writes "CNN carrying this... 'The Genesis capsule which crashed in the Utah desert Wednesday has been lifted out of its impact crater and moved to a holding area, NASA reported on its Web site. Scientists were cautiously optimistic that the payload -- dozens of fragile tiles that had collected particles of the solar wind for about two years -- could still yield viable material.'"

Great news.... maybe.

[keiferb]

I had the pleasure(?) of being off on a sick day yesterday, so I was able to watch the landing live. I felt terrible when the thing hit, I can only imagine what the folks who've been involved with this thing for several years must have felt. It'd be great to see something useful come out of the whole project.

Re:Great news.... maybe.

[Randolpho]

Heh... it's kinda like when you miss the game and your favorite team loses. It's all your fault because you weren't there to cheer them on!

YOU JINX!!! You broke Genesis! It was planet forbidden!!!! ;)

Quarantine.

[torpor]

Yes, I understand the 'contamination of the valuable samples' issue, but what about the other angle - that of quarantining Earths valuable ecosphere from whatever particles were floating out there in the Solar Winds?

Are we really absolutely sure that there's nothing on those plates, awfully petri-dish'y to me, which doesn't eat gold or platinum or carbon ferociously, has not been able to survive gravity/atmosphere so well, but which we just gave a free ride down here to a land of milk and honey?

Well, I guess not. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing the science, right, to find out whats up there?

Yeah, the Andromeda Strain puns were rampant, but now, 24 hours later, have we really thought enough about our return-to-earth of foreign space particles?

Re:Quarantine.

[Otter]

It's not like the probe went through some Star Trek-ish continuum rift. If there were something like that out there, not all that far away, it would have hitched a ride down on a meteorite a billion years ago.

Re:Quarantine.

[Otter]

By the way, my comment wasn't intended to be funny -- and his was thought-provoking, and certainly not a troll.

Re:Quarantine.

[bcattwoo]

Just to be safe, send all your gold and platinum possessions to me for safe keeping.

Sorry to burst your bubble

[Royster]

But particles from the solar wind interact with and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and have been doing so for billions of years. Perhaps you need to modify your tinfoil hat to include a mask and rebreather device so that you can be safe from those alien particles.

Re:Sorry to burst your bubble

[Royster]

There's no real mystery about chemical reactions and which reactions are exothermic and can provide energy for creatures to use. We know this stuff. If creatures could get energy from raw ores, they would already have evolved on the earth's surface to take advantage of that energy source. We do have some bacteria which can reduce sulfur and emit sulfur hydrides (rotten eggs smell) but those all mostly working off sulfur which is not in its lowest energy state. These occur where geothermic activity brings he

Re:Sorry to burst your bubble

[torpor]

Your fears are science fiction, not science.

okay, if you say so, fine by me. don't blame me if this statement ends up in a .sig file, or scraped on a cave wall somewhere, but ...

Re:Sorry to burst your bubble

[nounderscores]

sort of true. The earth's magnetic field deflects most of the charged stuff away, with only a small amount of the total solar wind hitting the north and south poles.

I wouldn't be so worried about exobiology coming down to eat us, but the point about the genesis capsule was to get outside our magnetosphere and see what was out there.

If only we had a robot version of the shuttle. We could have parked the capsule in orbit and then analysed it in the science module in the shuttle bay. Then we could have beame

Re:Sorry to burst your bubble

[Royster]

Sure the magnetic field deflects a lot of charged ions, but the space beastie or correspondent is afraid of is a lot bigger than an ion and would not likely be (a) charged or (b) deflected.

There wasn't really anything wrong with the design of Genesis. It just failed to deploy its parachutes on reentry. It appears that Murphy is an astronaut.

It's my understanding that a pilot needs to actually land the shuttle on the ground.

3 posts from sci.space.news

[noselasd]

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE F TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE [phone] DC Agle [phone]
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Donald Savage [phone]
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

RELEASE: 2004-219 September 8, 2004

Genesis Mission Status Report

The Genesis sample return capsule entered Earth's atmosphere at
9:52:47 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time and entered the preplanned entry
ellipse in the Utah Test and Training Range as predicted. However, the
Genesis capsule, as a result of its parachute not deploying, impacted
the ground at a speed of 311 kilometers per hour (193 miles per hour).
The impact occurred near Granite Peak on a remote portion of the
range. No people or structures were anywhere near the area.

"We have the capsule," said Genesis project manager Don Sweetnam of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It is on the
ground. We have previously written procedures and tools at our
disposal for such an event. We are beginning capsule recovery
operations at this time."

By the time the capsule entered Earth's atmosphere, the flight crews
tasked to capture Genesis were already in the air. Once it was
confirmed the capsule touched down out on the range, the flight crews
were guided toward the site to initiate a previously developed
contingency plan. They landed close to the capsule and, per the plan,
began to document the capsule and the area.

"For the velocity of the impact, I thought there was surprisingly
little damage," said Roy Haggard of Vertigo Inc., Lake Elsinore,
Calif., who took part in the initial reconnaissance of the capsule. "I
observed the capsule penetrated the soil about 50 percent of its
diameter. The shell had been breached about three inches and I could
see the science canister inside and that also appeared to have a small
breach," he said.

The safety of recovery personnel has been the top priority. The
capsule's separation charge had to be confirmed safe before the
capsule could be moved. The recovery team is in the process of preparing to move the capsule to a clean room.

The Genesis mission was launched in August 2001 on a journey to
capture samples from the storehouse of 99 percent of all the material
in our solar system -- the Sun. The samples of solar wind particles,
collected on ultra-pure wafers of gold, sapphire, silicon and diamond,
were designed to be returned for analysis by Earth-bound scientists.

JPL manages the Genesis mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver,
developed and operated the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology.

For information about the Genesis Sample Return Mission on the
Internet, visit http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=CPQk9GcuEylO-3BCLCX xIg.. . For background information about Genesis, visit http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Cu7MSKOwBElO-3BCLCX xIg.. .

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE F TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE [phone] DC Agle [phone]
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Donald Savage [phone]
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

RELEASE: 2004-221 September 8, 2004

Genesis Mission Status: Canister Moved Into Cleanroom

The science canister from the Genesis mission was moved into the
cleanroom at the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground in Utah early
Wednesday evening. First, a team of specialists plucked pieces
of dirt and mud that had lodged in the canister after the mission's
sample return capsule landed at high speed in the Utah desert. The
Genesis team will begin examining the contents of the canister

Pyros never triggered

[Somegeek]

New Scientist is reporting that the pyros never went off to trigger the parachute sequence. NASA doesn't know yet why they didn't go off; batteries, sensors and the electronics responsible are being looked at as possible causes.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 96379 [newscientist.com]

Re:uhm...

[Somegeek]

Exactly why was this obvious? I believe that NASA itself was previously unsure on this point. To the best of my knowledge, (and the reason that I posted it), was that this had not been known/reported before.

There could have been various other failure modes where some or all of the pyros did fire but the chutes were not seen and it still crashed;

pyros fire, drogue not released

pyros fire, drogue released but tangled due to spin,

pyros fire, drogue released, line broke off not pulling out main chute....

Re:Pyros never triggered

[wetlettuce]

NASA doesn't know yet why they didn't go off;

BBC News is reporting that a faulty battery is the best likely cause.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3643346.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Another CNN Story, More Pictures

[AndyCampbell]

Here's another CNN story [cnn.com] with a few more pictures of the capsule after being recovered and brought back to a hangar.

Re:Another CNN Story, More Pictures

[ackthpt]

Here's another CNN story with a few more pictures of the capsule after being recovered and brought back to a hangar.

The picture suggests they actually brought back a large armadillo... maybe it broke Genesis' fall.

Re:Are we sure it was an accident?

[Ayaress]

Yeah, yeah, replying to flaimbait, I know.

Anyway... It's really a straightforward problem where you'd need seriously good proof to even suggest sabotage. This recovery was a chain of events that had to go off flawlessly, or this would happen. First, the reentry had to be spot-on. Second, the parachute had to work. Third, the recovery aircraft had to snatch it in mid air with a hook. The reentry, parachute, aircraft, pilot, hook, and any one of dozens of instruments used to get them all into the right align

Re:Are we sure it was an accident?

[wetlettuce]

Big deal, Europe MISSED MARS two times out of four.
Technically, the last time the landing craft (Beagle-2 [wikipedia.org]) actually landed on Mars...just a little quicker than planned. If fact almost exactly the same as the Genesis payload except there was no-one to dig it out.

Re:Are we sure it was an accident?

[Ayaress]

Speaking of Beagle, Genesis and Beagle were both designed in part by the same guy [westpress.co.uk].

This just in...

[MasterDirk]

Preliminary research on the materials recovered from the probe lead scientists to conclude that the sun is indeed composed mainly of sand and broken glass.

</badjoke>

Re:This just in...

[boofums]

Do you suppose my son could apply design elements from the Genesis capsule to his school egg drop content?

I know who done it!

[Pamplemousse]

It was those Mormons! They all live out in Utah right?

My hopes for NASA

[kjones692]

With any luck, this won't deter NASA's plans for a manned expedition to the Sun.