NASA loses spacecraft on descent -- Engineers rush to salvage material collected by 3-year Genesis project

Houston Chronicle 09/09/04
author: Mark Carreau
(Copyright 2004)

Parachute problems forced NASA's Genesis spacecraft to slam into the Utah desert Wednesday and may have ruined an expensive and delicate attempt to study the origins of the solar system.

Three years after it was launched, the 420-pound capsule and its cargo of tiny solar particles augered into the ground after parachutes designed to slow the plummeting probe failed to open.

NASA had hoped to preserve the fragile grains of sun by using Hollywood stunt pilots in helicopters to snatch the capsule above the U.S. Army Dugway Proving ground southwest of Salt Lake City.

While research teams scrambled to see whether something could be salvaged from the $264 million mission, NASA initiated an investigation that could have far-reaching implications for robotic planetary missions either under way or on the drawing board.

Space Probe Fails to Deploy Its Parachute and Crashes
New York Times 09/09/04
author: Kenneth Chang
c. 2004 New York Times Company

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah, Sept. 8 - NASA's $264 million Genesis mission came to a sudden and violent end on Wednesday morning, when a capsule returning with samples of the Sun slammed into the desert here at nearly 200 miles an hour after its parachutes failed to open.

Two helicopters flown by Hollywood stunt pilots had been hovering in the area to catch the capsule in midair as it glided gently over the desert at 25 m.p.h. under a large parafoil parachute. The stuntmen never had the chance.

The capsule crashed in the Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range, a vast open space in western Utah. Even with the parachute failure, the capsule still fell within the expected landing area, and officials said there was never any danger to people or buildings.

The impact left the 450-pound capsule, which looked like a small flying saucer, on its side half-buried in the sand, with its inner canister cracked open to the desert air. Inside the canister some, if not all, of the plates that had been collecting particles from the Sun lay shattered.