http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/09/0 ... index.html
This was an attempt to bring home samples from solar winds. The craft was supposed to be slowed by parachute and caught by a helicopter (however the hell they thought that would work) and apparently the chutes failed. The craft hit the ground at over 100mph.
genesis craft crashes
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Jice Virago
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Did they find Spock's coffin near where it impacted?
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .
Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Dwight Eisenhower
Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Dwight Eisenhower
Re: genesis craft crashes
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... 40824.htmlNeost wrote:The craft was supposed to be slowed by parachute and caught by a helicopter (however the hell they thought that would work)
A better parachute
One of Genesis' major advantages over past sample return missions is its parafoil -- a parachute-like airfoil similar to those used by skydivers to safely breach the gap from plane to Earth.
"It's more efficient," said Haggard, who is also CEO of the Elsinore, California-based Vertigo, Inc. firm that pioneered the parafoil mid-air retrieval approach behind Genesis. "It flies forward, so a helicopter can literally fly in formation with the capsule."
The nylon parafoil measures about 34 feet (10.5 meters) by 12 feet (3 meters) and is reinforced with a load-bearing cable of Technora, a Kevlar variant strong enough to hold more than 10 sample return capsules, let alone one.
Mid-air retrievals of satellite film canisters in the 1960s used round parachutes that fell straight down, creating low-pressure air turbulence just above the parachute. That could be dangerous to approaching aircraft, which could fall into the parachute canopy if the retrieval went awry.
"It was essentially a near miss to a mid-air collision, and because of the turbulence [the parachute] dances around a bit," said Bob Corwin, Genesis recovery systems engineer at Lockheed Martin, which built the spacecraft. "All of that made the encounter a very tricky process."
The Genesis encounter, however, is anticipated to be rather smooth, with the retrieval helicopter trailing the spacecraft by about 500 feet (152 meters) before zooming in for the catch.
Haggard's stunt pilots have run through 11 perfect practice retrievals using a hook-tipped pole attached to each helicopter's struts. The hook detaches once it snags a parachute and 452-pound capsule (205-kilogram), and reels out about 400 feet (121 meters) to lessen the mid-air impact.
"It's connected to a winch like a large fishing pole," said Corwin, adding that the line connected to the hook is made of the same Technora material reinforcing the return capsule's parafoil.
"We think sample return is going to the next big thing for NASA," Corwin said.
Have You Hugged An Iksar Today?
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It's still possible the samples were preserved. I'm greateful for any successes in our space program considering the incredible detail in planning and precision that must take place.
It is demorilizing to have a failed mission but I can accept the risk of failure in order to keep exploring and gaining knowledge.
It is demorilizing to have a failed mission but I can accept the risk of failure in order to keep exploring and gaining knowledge.
Potentially good news. Hopefully there is enough material for analysis.
SALT LAKE CITY — NASA scientists said Friday they had recovered some intact materials from the wreckage of the Genesis space capsule (search) that crashed this week and were hopeful that the mission to gather solar atoms could be salvaged.
"We should be able to meet many, if not all, of our science goals," said physicist Roger C. Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (search).
The capsule, launched into space in 2001, crashed while returning to Earth on Wednesday, slamming into the ground at nearly 200 mph after parachutes failed to open. It cracked open like a clamshell, and left an inner canister containing the disks badly damaged.
Some 350 palm-sized wafers made up five disks that were open to the solar wind during the mission, collecting atoms from the sun. Scientists had feared the wafers shattered like glass in the crash, and many of them did. But they were surprised to find some fully intact, and were characterizing it as good news.
"We want to try to get out as much of those (wafers) as we can," Wiens said.
Those platters were packed so tightly in the wreckage of the crash, it took scientists more than a day to pry them apart and inspect the precious cargo. The capsule held billions of charged atoms — a total haul no bigger than a few grains of salt. The particles could explain how the sun formed 4.5 billion years ago and what keeps it fueled.