Genesis makes a crash-landing

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND — The Genesis spacecraft crashed into Dugway's mud flats Wednesday, and as crews began digging to retrieve it, initial suspicions focused on the battery, sensor and other gear that were supposed to release a drogue parachute.

Adding to the concern over Wednesday's smash, the Genesis design is similar to that of the Stardust project, a spacecraft currently far beyond Earth. At the end of its assignment to gather material from a comet, Stardust is scheduled to fly to Dugway in January 2006 for the same type of midair catch that had been planned for Genesis.

Despite catastrophic failure of the Genesis re-entry equipment, scientists remained hopeful that some data from the $264 million project might be salvaged. In addition, information radioed back during the years that the probe collected solar wind particles is scientifically valuable.

Stunned NASA officials, project researchers, engineers, their families and news representatives sat silently inside a giant hangar at Dugway's Michael Army Airfield on Wednesday, watching screens that showed live video of the re-entry and crash.

"Sickening," said Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M., flight payload leader during the space portion of the excursion.

The craft had spent three years gliding 1.86 million miles through space, collecting atoms that blow off the sun. These particles of the solar wind don't reach Earth because the planet's magnetic field deflects them.

Atoms of solar material embedded themselves in delicate glass-like wafers exposed by Genesis. Later, they were to be analyzed in laboratories to learn more about the sun's makeup.

Upon Genesis' re-entry into the atmosphere, the drogue parachute was intended to slow the capsule from nearly 25,000 miles per hour; then the drogue would detach and a larger parafoil would allow it to glide slowly toward the desert of Dugway Proving Ground.

Deseret Morning News graphicGenesisRequires Adobe Acrobat.

Helicopters were to snag the parafoil in midair and lower it gently to the desert so samples wouldn't break. A chopper crew was to remove the parafoil because its wind drag caused problems. Next, the helicopter was supposed to lift the capsule to a "clean room" that was built at Dugway's airfield. The clean room would guarantee samples remained uncontaminated by the atmosphere.