All species that reach the stars must have their fingertips sung. Probably more than once.
One of NASA’s posts on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website is an iconic reminder of the setbacks in our space history.
“A flying saucer from outer space landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters,” says the description in the photo, released in November 2018, although NASA does not hint at a alien visit.
The crashed plate, half-buried in the desert sand, was actually the return capsule of the Genesis spacecraft. And he wasn’t supposed to play so brutally.
Launched on August 8, 2001, the Genesis mission was the space agency’s ambitious effort to send a spacecraft to our star’s solar wind, collect samples, and return them to Earth.
By collecting data on the composition of charged particles flowing from the Sun’s corona, the researchers hoped to accurately determine the composition of the star and learn more about the elements around the formation of the planets in the system. Solar.
To bring us solar wind samples, the Genesis vessel was equipped with a sample return capsule containing a container of solar wind materials, assembled when the vessel spent two years orbiting around point 1 of Lagrange, one of the points in space where the gravity of the Earth and the Sun are precisely balanced.
The vessel captured the solar wind by deploying a series of collector arrays, each loaded with high-purity materials such as aluminum, sapphire, silicon and even gold.
Artist representation of the spaceship with its folded matrices. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
“The materials we used in the Genesis collector arrays had to be physically strong enough to launch without breaking; keep the sample while the Sun warmed them during collection; and be pure enough to be able to analyze the elements of the solar wind after returning to Earth, “explained project scientist Amy Jurewicz on September 3, 2004.
Five days later, this sample capsule and its precious matrices fell to the ground in Utah, at an estimated speed of 310 km / h (193 mph).
(USAF 388th Range Sqd., Genesis Mission, NASA)
What was supposed to happen was quite different: 127 seconds after re-entering the atmosphere, it would blow a mortar aboard the capsule that released a preliminary parachute to slow down and stabilize the descent.
At the time, a main parachute was to be inflated, which provided the capsule with a gentle descent to the Utah test and training camp.
In the photo of the accident, you can see helicopters, hovering nearby, ready to stick the capsule in the air and transport it directly to a clean room to prevent contamination of the samples.
None of these parachutes deployed.
After a thorough investigation, the error goes back to a set of sensors, barely the size of the metal end of a pencil. They had been installed backwards.
These tiny devices had to detect increasing g-forces as the capsule fell to the ground and triggered the deployment of the parachute.
As you can imagine, the crash caused severe damage, breaking several matrices and contaminating the precious cargo inside.
Once the sample capsule was recovered from the site that sank the heart of his disappearance, the project team set out to recover everything that could still be recovered and studied.
One of the Genesis team, Karen McNamara, inspects the damage to the capsule. (NASA)
Fortunately, the Genesis mission was not completely ruined, even after such a dramatic arrival of the sample capsule. Some of the robust collecting materials survived and the researchers managed to clean the surfaces without disturbing the solar material embedded inside.
Three years later, a series of articles were published on the findings of Genesis. Thanks to the daring mission, we learned unprecedented details about the composition of the Sun and the elemental differences between our star and the inner planets of the Solar System.
“The Sun hosts more than 99 percent of the material that currently exists in our solar system, so it’s a good idea to get to know it better,” said Genesis lead researcher Don Burnett of the Institute of Technology of California.
“While it was more difficult than expected, we answered some important questions and, like all successful missions, generated many more.”
A version of this story was first published in November 2018.