NASA’s Genesis Capsule Crashes

8 Sep, 2004 at 11:17pm ET Article published in Tech

NASA’s Genesis return capsule crashed into the desert Wednesday morning due to an apparent malfunction in its parachutes.

The 420-pound space capsule was to have been plucked out of the air by a helicopter and returned safely to Earth. It was carrying solar wind samples — charged atoms of oxygen and sodium — weighing less than 20 micrograms, which is less than a few grains of salt. It is unclear whether the samples have been destroyed. NASA officials say that the sapphire, silicon and diamond wafers that were used to collect the samples may have been shattered in the crash, although it may be possible to piece them back together.

Source: Wired

Comments

8 Sep 2004 ~ 11:55pm primesuspect
9 Sep 2004 ~ 12:27am Lord_Night Jsut goes to show that no matter how much you spend on something.

there is a gremlin somewhere waiting to **** it up.....

Did anyone see the crash, I was watching.. was kinda sweet left a nice crater in the ground..

but to bad alot of scientific equipment and data may have been lost.
9 Sep 2004 ~ 2:47am PirateNinja nasa deserves more funding.
9 Sep 2004 ~ 4:42am Unregistered where's the emergency parachute when you need one? seriously i can't believe they didn't have a plan b....
9 Sep 2004 ~ 5:10am Lord_Night

Unregistered (Guest) wrote:

where's the emergency parachute when you need one? seriously i can't believe they didn't have a plan b....

They did have a Plan-B....

pick it all up after it crashes....

and a Plan-C

if it falls in the wrong area of the world.. it was filled with explosives.
that could be set off remotely
9 Sep 2004 ~ 6:12am CyrixInstead I hate it when things like this happen, it puts science back years.

The Beagle II project that went up to Mars would have been teriffic had it gone according to plan.

Shame

~Cyrix
9 Sep 2004 ~ 10:26am Cyclonite I saw a recording of the crash. Looked pretty cool, but soo sad that all that data could possibly be lost. *Sigh*
9 Sep 2004 ~ 11:48am Gobbles I find it funny that they can shoot an RC car through space and land it on mars, drive it around but they cant manage to get something back to our own planet from a few hundred miles up...

xXUSERXx
9 Sep 2004 ~ 3:09pm Lord_Night They Got it Back... jsut came back in more peices then when it left....
but you would think one of those so called Rocket Scientest would have asked
Hey will happen if the main chute doesn't open or gets damaged?
10 Sep 2004 ~ 5:47am EyesOnly

Lord_Night wrote:

They Got it Back... jsut came back in more peices then when it left....

Lord_Night wrote:

but you would think one of those so called Rocket Scientest would have asked
Hey will happen if the main chute doesn't open or gets damaged?

And every parajumper in the world would have the answer.

As would vileycoyoty (sp) :banghead:
12 Sep 2004 ~ 5:55am Lord_Night This may be out of topic... .but do you know that the Us goverment spent 2.1 million Dollars trying to figure out how to make a pen that would write in space....

the Soveit Union solved this for 52 cents... they gave the Astronauts PENCILS......

:woowoo: