Utah could become a samples spaceport

The successful comet flyby performed Friday by the Stardust probe, and the fact it and another probe will land samples in Utah, may pave the way for Utah to become a "spaceport for interplanetary samples."

That's the assessment of Seth Jarvis, director of Clark Planetarium, commenting on a dizzying weekend of space successes. He was joined by other Utahns jubilant about two spectacular space feats.

Altogether, four spacecraft are either targeting Utah or have important components built here:

• Spirit, the Mars lander that bounced onto the surface of Gusav Crater on the red planet Saturday night. Hundreds of Utahns working for ATK Aerospace, headquartered in Salt Lake City, built parts of the project.

The nine solid rocket boosters that helped lift Spirit's Delta II rocket into space were constructed at ATK's Thiokol Propulsion operations at Magna and ATK Composites in Clearfield, while the mast for the rover's camera was built at ATK's Magna Space Structures Facility, Jeff Foote, president of ATK Aerospace, told the Deseret News earlier.

• Opportunity, a Mars lander that is to land at Meridian Planum on the other side of Mars in about three weeks. It is an identical vehicle to Spirit and has the same Utah connections.

• Stardust comet probe, which flew past Comet Wild-2 (pronounced Vilt-2) Friday night to collect primordial material from the earliest days of the solar system, will land in January 2006 at the Utah Test and Training Range in the state's western desert.

• Genesis, which has collected samples of the solar wind about 1 million miles closer to the sun than Earth's orbit, is to parachute through the atmosphere above the UTTR on Sept. 8. NASA engineers hope to snag the capsule in midair via helicopter.

Genesis and Stardust make "Utah sort of Earth's spaceport for interplanetary samples," said Jarvis. "We're looking for Utah to become the preferred landing site for science missions to the solar system.

"It's a huge solar system, and yet all of this stuff lands in our own back yard. What could be more exciting than that?"

Patrick Wiggins, NASA solar system ambassador to Utah, was thrilled by the amazing space shots of the past weekend.

"Talk about a good weekend for NASA," he said in a telephone interview. "Friday, a flawless encounter with Comet Wild-2, particles of which were captured in the spacecraft," he said.