Astronomy: Genesis

On 8 September 2004 the Genesis spacecraft returned to Earth from a succesful mission to the Sun. Its objective was to capture solar wind particules and return these home. Unfortunately both 2 parachutes malfunctioned and the 205 kg heavy spacecraft crashed in the desert of Utah with an estimated speed of 300 km per hour. The spacecraft was launched on 8 August 2001 and was positioned on a lagrangian point (carefully balanced between the gravity of the Earth and our Sun). It collected a few billion atoms from the Suns solar wind. Scientist strongly believe that because the Sun's composition hasn't changed by time, the analysis of solar wind atoms will reveal much about how our Sun and Solar system has formed 4.5 billion years ago. Genesis is a suitable name for understanding how our solar system originated. This is one of the first studies of the Solar wind. It's expected that not the whole mission is a complete failure. Nasa is studying the sample compartments; it's possible that some compartments have more or less survived the crash without big contaminations from Earth materials. Related subjects >> the Sun >> Solar observatory SOHO >> Solar observatory Skylab

< JPG image 750 X 885 pixels > Pilots trained to capture the descending spacecraft in the air to prevent possible contamination from the Earth's ground. 8 September 2004, the crashed Genesis. 9 September 2004, Nasa specialists are investigating the spacecraft in a 'clean room'.