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Capsule’s crash dims
scientists’ hopes
A $260 million mission to
collect solar wind particles
ends in a Utah desert
The Genesis space capsule, which had orbited the sun for more than three years in an attempt to gather clues to the origin of the solar system, crashed to Earth today in the Utah desert after its parachute failed to deploy.
Stunt helicopter crews were scheduled to intercept the capsule using techniques developed on Hawaii-based missions to retrieve spy satellite film during the Cold War.
“There was a big pit in my stomach,” said physicist Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, which designed the atom collector plates. “This just wasn’t supposed to happen.”
The catastrophic descent left the Genesis capsule buried halfway underground and exposed its collection of solar atoms to contamination. The capsule held billions of atoms collected from the solar wind during a mission that was designed to reveal clues about the origin and evolution of the solar system.
Scientists were hoping they could salvage the broken disks that held the atoms, and perhaps still unravel the mystery of the solar system.
"This is actually not the worst-case scenario," said Andrew Dantzler, director of NASA's solar system division, noting the capsule embedded itself in soft desert soil and avoided hitting anything harder that would have made it a "total loss."
Flight engineers suspect a set of tiny explosives failed to trigger the capsule's parachutes, and the capsule slammed into the Utah desert at 193 mph.
A recovery team including Genesis project members retrieved the capsule from the crash site. The inner canister was flown to the Army airfield at the proving ground, where a clean room was established. Other parts of the capsule were taken to the base by truck.
Late yesterday, workers just outside the clean room were using tweezers to pick bits of mud from inside the canister. The five disks holding the particles were so tightly packed within the canister that it was hard to tell how badly they were damaged.
The researchers also feared contamination would disturb the embedded particles, but they still hoped to salvage at least some of the captured particles.
NASA planned to appoint a "mishap review board" within 72 hours that could take two to four months to determine a reason for the failure of the six-year, $260 million mission.
The spacecraft was designed and built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver. A company spokeswoman said engineers were beginning to analyze the failure with NASA, but had no immediate comment.
The Genesis mission, launched in 2001, marked the first time NASA has collected any objects from farther than the moon for retrieval to Earth.
Together, the charged atoms captured during 884 days on the capsule's five disks were no bigger than a few grains of salt, but scientists say that would be enough to reconstruct the chemical origin of the sun and its family of planets.
The five disks were of different thicknesses, which could make it easier for scientists to sort out shattered remnants and put pieces back together like a puzzle, Wiens said.
Specially designed sky hooks were supposed to snag cables trailing the parachute, said retired Air Force Master Sgt. Al Blankenship of Pearl City. The satellite retrieval is advanced, but the recovery mechanics is the same as the work done here 40 years ago by the 6594th Test Group at Hickam Air Force Base, he said yesterday.
The impact today drove the capsule halfway underground. NASA engineers feared the explosive for the parachute might still be alive, keeping helicopter crews at bay.
Hawaii crews retrieved more than 100 spy film capsules during the program that began in 1958 and became obsolete in 1986 when video transmission brought satellite imagery into a new age, said Blankenship.
“We started out catching film capsules that weighed about 200 pounds,” said the former electronics technician. “In the last years, they were 1,100-pound canisters, 3-by-4-feet in size.”
The mid-air catches were made from modified C-119 “flying boxcars” and later, from C-130 cargo airplanes flying 150 mph, said Blankenship. Later, helicopters were used to recover capsules from the ocean.
All of film canisters from the Project Corona spy satellite project were ejected over the Pacific in a program under the direction of the National Reconnaissance Office. “We couldn’t talk about it” until it was declassified from secret status in 1999, he said.
The Genesis mission marks the first time NASA has collected and returned any objects from farther than the moon, said Roy Haggard, Genesis’ flight operations chief and CEO of Vertigo Inc., which designed the current capture system.
The charged atoms — a “billion billion” of them — could reveal clues about the origin and evolution of our solar system, said Don Burnett, Genesis principal investigator and a nuclear geochemist at California Institute of Technology.
Together, the charged atoms captured on the capsule’s disks of gold, sapphire, diamond and silicone are no bigger than a few grains of salt, but scientists say that would be enough to reconstruct the chemical origin of the sun and its family of planets.
The excitement of mid-air retrieval is the same now as it was then, said Blankenship, who was involved in 13 recoveries during his 17 years at Hickam. “Pilots don’t like to fly at things coming at them, they’re trained to avoid things in the air.”
The retired sergeant has made it his mission to share the history. He was invited to brief officers at Pacific Air Forces headquarters last month and he routinely speaks to school classes and other groups. He brings hooks, load lines, parachutes and photographs to make the spy story of a generation ago real.
The first film capsule to be recovered — on Sept. 18, 1960 — is now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the C-119 aircraft that made that catch is in the U.S. Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio.
