New Mars

It appears that the Samples From Genesis Craft are being Sent to Calif.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm....apsules

The crash of a capsule returning fragile samples of solar particles last month was likely to have been caused by a design flaw that led to the sensors that were to deploy the capsule's parachutes being pointed in the wrong direction, a NASA investigatory panel reported yesterday.

The Genesis spacecraft had spent 850 days in deep space collecting particles of solar wind, charged atoms ejected at high speeds by the sun that may tell scientists about conditions that existed in the infant solar system nearly 5 billion years ago.

Mission designers had been so worried about possible damage and contamination to the collection plates that plans not only called for parachutes to slow the capsule's landing but a helicopter flown by a stunt pilot was to catch it in midair and then gently lower it to the ground.

Instead, when Genesis returned to earth on Sept. 8, neither an initial small parachute nor the main parachute deployed, and the capsule slammed into ground at nearly 200 miles per hour.

The investigatory panel pointed to sensors that were designed to sense the tremendous forces of deceleration as friction during re-entry slowed the capsule down from 25,000 miles per hour. The sensors were then to send a signal to a computer that would deploy the parachutes.

A flaw in the design of the capsule, however, placed the sensors in an orientation that did not allow them to fully measure the deceleration, the panel said. Consequently, the sensors never sent the signal to the computer, and the computer never sent the command to deploy the parachutes.

"This single cause has not yet been fully confirmed, nor has it been determined whether it is the only problem within the Genesis system," Dr. Michael G. Ryschkewitsch, chairman of the investigation panel, said in a statement released by NASA yesterday evening. "The board is working to confirm this proximate cause, to determine why this error happened, why it was not caught by the test program and an extensive set of in-process and after-the-fact reviews of the Genesis system."

The crash broke open the capsule and smashed many of the collection plates, but mission scientists say they are nonetheless optimistic that they can still salvage much of the science.

NASA's Genesis Cleanroom Electronic Field Trip
Scientists are usually concerned about protecting the Earth from the sun. But what happens when the sun needs to be protected from Earth? NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas has built the answer in the form of a class 10 cleanroom, in which Genesis scientists analyze solar samples. The cleanroom will ensure that neither contamination nor debris will mask the solar wind samples, throwing off the results. The mission of Astromaterials Curation at the Johnson Space Center is to protect, preserve and distribute for study samples from the moon and interplanetary space in support of solar system exploration.

You can travel into the cleanroom via an electronic field trip. Virtually suit up and learn "how clean is clean?"