Video
of the Crash
DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, UTAH
- The crash landing of the Genesis sample return capsule has left space engineers
and scientists sifting for answers, not only regarding what caused the mishap,
but whether science can still be salvaged from its precious cargo of solar particles.
A preliminary but leading
candidate for the calamity is a battery failure onboard the capsule. That battery
was to have initiated a series of explosive charges that would have deployed
a parachute system, slowing the capsule down to permit a mid-air helicopter
recovery.
An electronic glitch in
the sample return capsule -- or perhaps a problem with an onboard gravity sensor
-- are also being weighed as possible items that triggered the crash.
Internal injuries
The 420-pound (205 kilogram)
capsule slammed to the desert floor of the Utah Test and Training Range at an
estimated speed of 193 miles per hour, more than the 100 mph first reported
by one NASA official. Initial looks at the capsule showed that the craft's sample
container, inside an outer housing, was breached in the high-speed impact.
NASA has begun creation
of a Genesis investigation board to determine the root cause of the mishap.
That detective work is likely to be a much easier task compared to a spacecraft
problem cropping up far from Earth.
Total cost of the Genesis
missions is $264 million.
Setback, but not a total
failure?
"As you know, this
can be risky business," Andrew Dantzler, Solar System Division Director
at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. told reporters here today. Contingency
plans have been enacted, he said.
"Safety for all personnel
is our top priority," Dantzler said. Our first immediate objective is to ensure
that our ground teams are in no danger from any potential unexploded ordnance
in the payload as we safe the spacecraft."
Initial inspection of the
capsule showed that sets of onboard explosive devices designed to deploy the
parachute setup had not fired.
Ground crews that first
reached the capsule - sitting at an angle and half its diameter below surface
- found it relatively intact, much to their surprise. A recent rain here appears
to have softened the desert floor, perhaps contributing to the capsule remaining
somewhat together. A large exterior crack was evident, however.
"The science samples
have been returned to Earth, but we don't know the state of the collectors that
hold the science just yet. We'll be learning that over the hours, days and weeks
to come." Dantzler said.
The mishap board "will immediately
look at all the data, film of the spacecraft coming in, and telemetry leading
up to atmospheric entry," Dantzler told SPACE.com.
"It's a difficult moment
right now," said Don Sweetnam, Genesis project Manager from the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. He has been working on the Genesis
project since 1997. The craft launched in 2001 and collected particles of solar
wind.
"We're in a situation
where the scientists...are going to have to deal with a lot more contamination
of samples than they had planned," Sweetnam said.
Shovels in hand
Ground crews are now determining
how best to extract the Genesis return capsule from its impact spot, said Don
Sevilla, Genesis Payload Recovery Lead at JPL.
"We do have to dig
it out. In real time they'll have to assess whether they will open the capsule
further and remove the science canister and transport it separately, or collect
the entire capsule in the shape it's in now and ferry it back by helicopter,"
Sevilla said.
| UPDATE,
10:37 p.m. ET: The science canister from the Genesis spacecraft has
been transported by helicopter to a holding area next to a specially constructed
clean room on the nearby Army base, according to a NASA statement late today.
A foil wrapping will be removed from the canister and dirt will be brushed
off before the canister is moved into a clean room for analysis of the contents.
|
SPACE.com has learned
that helicopters will fly to the crash site tonight. Officials will remove the
science canisters from inside the probe and bring them back to a clean room
at the Utah desert facility, where scientists can begin to figure out what they
have to work with.
Mission planners had considered
the possibility that the Genesis capsule might crash to Earth, not slowed down
by its parachute system, Sevilla pointed out. "This is a contingency plan
already developed...already written up and, unfortunately, we are having to walk
through it."
Sevilla said the breach
of the sample canister brings up a more than normal care-in-handling issue.
"We want to maintain our precious cargo...the collectors that have been returned
to Earth."
Link to Stardust?
One irksome aspect to the
Genesis capsule problem is a possible link to the NASA Stardust
mission. It too is a Discovery-class probe: A cheaper, better, faster design
of a spacecraft.
In January 2006, NASA's
Stardust's return canister of comet and interstellar particles is to parachute
into the Utah Test and Training Range.
"While the entry systems
are not identical they do have a common design approach. Many of the materials
and philosophies for redundancy are common to Genesis. It's vitally important
that we understand the most probable root cause of this landing failure,"
said Chris Jones, Director for Solar System Exploration at JPL.
Wait and see
Despite the hard landing
of the Genesis canister, officials involved with the project were hopeful that
science data might be obtained from the wreckage.
"We're not going to
lose the atoms. They're not going to come out of the collectors. Will assess
the situation and decide what to do next," said Carlton Allen, Astromaterials
Curator at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "We may well
have lost the information about which array the particular shard corresponds
to. But all the ions are still there," Allen told SPACE.com.
Jim Crocker, Vice President
of Lockheed Martin's civil space work that includes building and operating the
Genesis spacecraft, said that science might be retrievable from the battered
capsule.
"It's possible. We'll
have to wait and see. We have to start looking and figure out what happened.
It appeared that the capsule was tumbling. We had contingencies if we had a
hard landing. There are ways to recover some of the science. But we really have
to see what the state of the samples are," Crocker said.
One light-hearted quip from
a scientist witnessing the Genesis crash landing: "It looks like we've
already started the Genesis sample distribution process...not quite in the way
that we had envisioned, but we'll deal with it."
Genesis Capsule Crash Video
Shows the final moments of the Genesis sample-return capsule spinning out
of control and crashing into Earth on Sept. 8, 2004.
Credit: NASA TV |
 A
member of the Genesis Sample Return team, shown in this image taken from
video, looks at the capsule after it fell to Earth without deploying its
parachute Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2004. Click
to enlarge
Credit: AP Photo/NASA/JPL. |
 Spectators
and media watch the Genesis Sample Return capsule fall to earth on television
screens from Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Click
to enlarge
Credit: AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac. |
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