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Post-impact news briefing
Officials hold a post-landing news conference in Utah a couple hours after Genesis returned to Earth on Sept. 8. (40min 52sec file)
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Capsule first spotted
Powerful tracking cameras spot the Genesis capsule for the first time a couple hundred thousand feet above Earth, prompting applause in the control centers. But just moments later, that joy turned to heartbreak. (1min 02sec file)
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Genesis crash lands
The Genesis sample return capsule tumbles through the sky and impacts the desert floor in Utah after its speed-slowing chute and parafoil failed to deploy for a mid-air recovery by a helicopter. (2min 29sec file)
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Slow-motion
This slow-motion video shows the Genesis capsule slamming into the ground. (1min 06sec file)
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Aerial views of crater
Aerial views show the Genesis capsule half buried in the Utah desert floor after its landing system suffered a failure. (1min 53sec file)
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Recovery helicopters
The primary and backup recovery helicopters take off with escort from a Blackhawk in preparation for the mid-air retrieval of Genesis. (1min 01sec file)
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The original plan
Animation shows how the Genesis spacecraft was supposed to return. Expert narration provided by JPL entry, descent and landing expert Rob Manning. (5min 29sec file)
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Return of Genesis
NASA's Genesis spacecraft will return to Earth on Sept. 8 with a capsule containing samples collected of solar wind. Officials preview the dramatic homecoming in this news conference. (50min 50sec file)
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Genesis status
Mission officials provide a Genesis status briefing from Utah on Sept. 7 -- one day before the craft turns to Earth. (43min 47sec file)
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KSC damage report
Director of the Kennedy Space Center, Jim Kennedy, briefs reports on the initial hurricane damage inspections at the spaceport on MOnday, Sept. 6. (24min 00sec file)
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Spacewalk highlights
This movie captues the highlights from the fourth spacewalk by space station Expedition 9 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Mike Fincke. (3min 33sec file)
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Preview of ISS spacewalk
NASA mission managers preview the upcoming fourth and final spacewalk by the Expedition 9 crew aboard the international space station. (50min 01sec file)
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Shuttles prepped for Frances
Workers close the payload bay doors, retract the landing gear and secure NASA's space shuttles in hangars at Kennedy Space Center to ride out Hurricane Frances. (3min 48sec file)
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Station pieces bagged
Modules and equipment awaiting launch to the International Space Station are covered with bags inside the processing facility at Kennedy Space Center as added protection from Hurricane Frances. (51sec file)
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Atlas blasts off
Lockheed Martin's last Atlas 2AS rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral carrying a classified National Reconnaissance Office spacecraft. (3min 59sec file)
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Salute to pad 36A
The Atlas launch team in the Complex 36 Blockhouse celebrate the history of pad 36A in a post-launch toast. The Atlas 2AS rocket flight was the last to launch from the pad, which entered service in 1962. (2min 09sec file)
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Mission success
The classified NRO payload is deployed from the Centaur upper stage to successfully complete the launch. (1min 56sec file)
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Genesis capsule slams back to Earth
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: September 8, 2004

A small spacecraft carrying priceless samples of the sun crashed into the Utah desert today when its stabilizing parachute failed to deploy, bringing an innovative $264 million mission, NASA's first sample return flight since the Apollo moonshots, to a disappointing end.

Spaceflight Now Plus
Additional coverage for subscribers:
VIDEO: POST-LANDING NEWS CONFERENCE QT

VIDEO: TRACKING CAMERAS FIRST SPOT CAPSULE DURING DESCENT QT
VIDEO: GENESIS CAPSULE TUMBLES TO A HIGH-SPEED IMPACT QT
VIDEO: SLOW-MOTION VIEW OF CAPSULE SLAMMING INTO GROUND QT
VIDEO: AERIAL VIEWS OF CAPSULE HALF BURIED IN IMPACT CRATER QT
VIDEO: RECOVERY HELICOPTERS TAKE OFF EARLIER TODAY QT
VIDEO: NARRATED ANIMATION SHOWS ORIGINAL RETURN PLAN QT
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The Genesis sample return canister, carrying atoms from the sun that were blown into space as part of the solar wind, was to have been plucked out of mid air by a helicopter flown by a Hollywood stunt pilot over the Utah Test and Training Range.

But a drogue chute needed to stabilize the craft before deployment of its large parafoil never fired and the craft slammed into the ground at about 193 mph.

Video showed the canister half buried in the Utah desert, largely intact. It was carrying 20 to 30 micrograms of solar wind material, the equivalent of a few grains of salt. The atoms were embedded in fragile glass-like wafers.


The Genesis capsule impacted the Utah desert after its chute and parafoil failed to deploy. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now
 
A mid-air capture had been planned because of concern those capture plates would break or shatter even in a parachute-assisted landing, making data analysis extremely difficult. Making matters worse, the canister broke open on ground impact today, exposing the plates to contaminants in Earth's atmosphere.

Even so, project scientists were hopeful about salvaging at least some of the mission's science objectives.

"The canister within the capsule has suffered a rupture so that you can actually see into it," said Steve Brody, Genesis program executive at NASA headquarters. "That is not as we would have liked, certainly.

"What is has enabled us to do, though, is to actually see some of the collector surfaces inside the canister. Some of those surfaces are intact on the structure which they are mounted, which is a very good sign.

"So that means not only have we returned a piece of the sun - here it is in Utah - but we fully expect that we will be able to make good use of those materials and derive some science."


The capsule was half buried from its high-speed landing. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now
 
The remains of the internal sample canister will be shipped to the Johnson Space Center in Houston as soon as possible for detailed analysis. In the meantime, an investigation board will study the accident to determine its cause and make recommendations "so we can learn from this mission, from the failure that obviously has occurred, and feed that back into future sample return missions," said Chris Jones, director of solar system exploration at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The 1,400-pound Genesis probe, a relatively low-cost Discovery-class mission, was launched Aug. 8, 2001, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Boeing Delta 2 rocket.

To collect pristine samples of the solar wind, the spacecraft was fired on a long, looping trajectory that carried it to a point about a million miles toward the sun where the gravity of Earth and its star essentially cancel each other out.

Genesis spent 27 months in a so-called halo orbit around the Lagrange 1, or L1, point, periodically exposing its five collectors to the passing solar wind. The collectors measured about one yard square and were each made up of 55 hexagonal tiles about four inches across. The tiles, in turn, were made up of various materials, ranging from silicon and germanium to artificial diamond. The materials were selected because of their ability to capture specific elements in the solar wind.

The re-entry vehicle, carrying the sealed sample container inside, separated from the main body of the spacecraft earlier today and made a pinpoint re-entry.

Hitting the atmosphere at 24,700 mph, the 420-pound sample canister's energy of motion was equivalent to that of a 4.5-million-pound freight train moving at 80 mph. In seconds, most of that energy was converted into heat, subjecting the probe's heat shield to temperatures up to 4,700 degrees and slowing the craft with a braking force of 30 times Earth's gravity.

Two minutes after entry began, at an altitude of about 21 miles, the small drogue parachute was to have unfurled to stabilize the craft and four minutes after that, at an altitude of about 22,000 feet, a wing-like parafoil was to deploy, slowing the craft's descent to a gentle 10 to 12 miles per hour.

Down below, two helicopters piloted by Hollywood stunt pilots were waiting, flying a criss-cross pattern along the spacecraft's ground track across the Utah Test and Training Range, an isolated military reservation where munitions and unpiloted aircraft are tested.


An artist's illustration shows what was supposed to happen as a helicopter flew up and captured the Genesis capsule in mid-air. Credit: NASA
 
Using radio beacons and radar tracking, one of the helicopters, piloted by Cliff Fleming of South Coast Helicopters in Santa Ana, Calif., was to have moved in for a mid-air recovery, snaring the parafoil with a large hook on the end of a pole mounted to one of the chopper's landing skids.

After attaching a nitrogen purge to protect the solar particles from earthly contamination, the sample canister was to have been trucked to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and moved into an ultra-clean laboratory for detailed scientific analysis.

But it was not to be. An on-board malfunction of some sort prevented a pyrotechnic device from firing as planned to release the drogue parachute. Six such "pyros" were on board and none of them fired. That could be due to a variety of problems, including trouble with a sensor needed to trigger the re-entry procedure or problems with an on-board battery needed to supply the necessary power.

The battery was a source of concern early in the mission when engineers ran into problems with a radiator needed to keep the unit cool. As a result, the battery ran quite a bit hotter than expected but extensive testing with similar batteries on the ground indicated that would not affect the flight hardware's performance.

"Cells like the ones in our battery have been ... under test about once a month the whole time we've been out there," said Bob Corwin, recovery operations team chief with spacecraft-builder Lockheed Martin. "So that battery has been requalified to a temperature about 5 degrees (Celsius) beyond what it's been exposed to during that period of time."

But, he told a reporter, "if you had completely no battery, once you don't fire the first (pyro) it doesn't matter, you don't fire the rest. So the battery is a possible cause for not firing the initial pyros."

Genesis project manager Don Sweetnam said all of the craft's systems were thoroughly tested over the last several months and there were no signs of any trouble.

"We thought things ought to work," he said. "But keep in mind when we buttoned the thing up at the Kennedy Space Center and launched it in 2001, the fate was sealed. There was really nothing we could do at this stage to change things."

Why did NASA spend more than $264 million to capture a few wisps of the solar wind? Because those traces are expected to serve as a sort of cosmic Rosetta stone, providing critical insights into the birth and evolution of our solar system.


Animation shows the Genesis capsule separating from the spacecraft's mothership earlier today while flying back to Earth. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now
 
The streaming solar wind originates in the sun's outer atmosphere. It is made up of electrons, protons and trace amounts of various atomic nuclei that are unchanged since the birth of the solar system.

In that sense, the solar wind is nothing less than a sample of the original cloud of gas and dust that coalesced to form the sun and its retinue of planet some 4.6 billion years ago. Capturing a sample of this raw material is the goal of NASA's innovative Genesis mission.

"The composition of the solar wind is a clue to the composition of the outer layers of the surface of the sun, which in turn is the composition of the solar nebula from which all the planets formed," Donald Burnett, principal investigator of the Genesis mission, said before launch in 2001. "That's the connection."

Scientists believe the sun and other stars in this neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy formed inside a vast molecular cloud that has since thinned out and dissipated. The stars formed when areas of slightly higher density contracted under their own gravity to form flattened, rotating solar nebulae.

As gravitational contraction continued in a given cloud, densities in the inner region eventually reached levels high enough to trigger nuclear fusion and a star was born. Material circling the infant sun clumped together to form planets, moons, asteroids and comets.

So far so good. But the details of this complex process - how the solar system evolved from a fairly homogenous cloud of dusty debris to the myriad objects we see today - are poorly understood. By determining the initial composition of the solar nebula, scientists had hoped to fill in the blanks.


A scientist holds one of the Genesis collectors during pre-launch assembly. Credit: NASA
 
"Most of our models and how we understand the formation and evolution of the solar system, processes that formed our planets, asteroids, comets and ... planetary atmospheres, all of that requires an assumption of an initial starting composition of our solar system," Meenakshi Wadhwa, a cosmochemist with the Field Museum in Chicago, said before launch.

Knowing the actual starting composition would "have a tremendous impacting of these on our understand areas."

"The sun has basically more than 99 percent of the mass of the solar system in it," Wadhwa said. "So if we know the composition very well of the sun, we basically understand the starting composition of the initial solar nebula."

A key goal of the Genesis mission was to precisely measure the abundances of three isotopes of oxygen: Oxygen-16, the most common form, with eight protons and eight neutrons; oxygen-17, with nine neutrons; and oxygen-18, which has 10 neutrons.

Scientists already understand the relative abundances of these isotopes in asteroids, Earth, the moon and Mars. But the ratio of the isotopes in the sun, and hence the original solar nebula, is not well understood.