Print

Mail

wiki links

Space capsule on its way back with precious cargo

A space capsule holding atoms collected from solar wind was en route to a tricky rendezvous with Earth yesterday, offering scientists the first material NASA has brought back from space in nearly three decades.

A pair of helicopters helmed by stunt pilots were set to hover about 1.6km above the Utah desert, ready to help snatch the refrigerator-sized capsule's parachute with a hook as it floats down at 122m a minute, or more than 1.8m per second.

"All systems are go," Don Sevilla, payload recovery leader of the Genesis project, said on Tuesday when the capsule was 216,000km above the Earth's surface. If all goes as planned, the mid-air capture was to take place yesterday.

The capsule's charged atoms -- a "billion billion" of them -- should reveal clues about the origin and evolution of our solar system, said Don Burnett, Genesis principal investigator and a nuclear geochemist at California Institute of Technology.

Genesis has been moving in tandem with Earth outside its magnetic shield on three orbits of the sun. It was to pick up speed rapidly as Earth's gravitational pull brings it closer before the atmosphere abruptly slows the descent.

That's when the helicopters take over.

Both Cliff Fleming, the lead helicopter pilot, and backup pilot Dan Rudert have replicated the retrieval in dozens of practice runs, and will have five chances to snag the capsule. If they fail, it will hit the ground and shatter the fragile disks holding the atoms. Once captured, the capsule will be tethered to a cable to cushion the impact.

Fleming and Rudert, stunt pilots by trade, were drafted for the US$260 million mission because of their expertise flying high and capturing objects. Fleming has swooped after sky surfers in the action movie XXX and towed actor Pierce Brosnan through the air in Dante's Peak. He just worked on Batman 4.

Fleming said the current job is tricky since he won't have any visual reference to judge the speed or distance of the 181kg capsule as he closes in from behind it.

Once the sample container is safely brought down, it will be packed up and driven with a convoy of armed guards to Houston's Space Center in a truck outfitted with air suspension for a gentle ride.

From there, the solar particles -- a storehouse of 99 percent of all the material in our solar system -- will be parceled out for analysis to the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Chicago's Argonne National Lab.

The Genesis mission, launched in 2001, marks the first time NASA has collected and returned any objects from farther than the moon.

Together, the charged atoms captured over 884 days on the capsule's disks of gold, sapphire, diamond and silicone are no bigger than a few grains of salt, but scientists say that's enough to reconstruct the chemical origin of the sun and its family of planets.

Scientists will keep busy for five years after Genesis completes its wild ride back to Earth. It will take at least six months before they expect to learn much from the solar wind particles.
This story has been viewed 2256 times.