Here Comes the Sun (Genesis)

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/feature...sis-040104.cfm

Spotlight: Here Comes the Sun
Media Contact: Charli Schuler (818) 393-5467
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
April 1, 2004

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

Little did the Beatles know their metaphor would be taken
literally one day. To the team behind NASA's Genesis
mission, it has been years since they sent their "little
darling," a small spacecraft with a wingspan of 22 feet (6.8
meters), out to collect and bring back a piece of the Sun.

"After more than two years of collecting solar wind ions,
we're thrilled that the Genesis spacecraft is about to close
up and come home," said Donald Sweetnam, Genesis project
manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. "On Thursday, April 1, we turn off the solar wind
concentrator, stow the collector arrays, close the science
canister cover, and lock it tight. The day after that, we
will close the sample return capsule backshell and latch it
in the configuration necessary for entry through Earth's
atmosphere five months later on September 8."

Genesis is the agency's first sample return mission since
the last Apollo mission in 1972, and the first ever to
return material collected beyond the Moon. The science
collection began November 30, 2001, with the opening of the
spacecraft's science canister and the extension of special
collector arrays to catch atoms from the solar wind. The
atoms it has collected, believed to have preserved the
composition of the solar nebula "cloud" from which our solar
system developed, will help scientists better understand
conditions in the distant past before Earth and other
planets formed.

"Genesis will return a small but precious amount of samples
leading to data that is crucial to our knowledge of the Sun
and the formation of our solar system," said Genesis
principal investigator Dr. Donald Burnett of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

To help carry out its mission, Genesis has four dynamic
instruments on board: bicycle-tire-sized solar-wind
collector arrays, made of pure materials such as diamond,
gold, silicon and sapphire, designed to entrap solar wind
particles; an ion monitor to record the speed, density,
temperature and approximate composition of the solar wind
ions; an electron monitor to make similar measurements of
electrons in the solar wind; and an ion concentrator to
separate and focus elements of the solar wind like oxygen
and nitrogen into special collectors.

"The science canister on the spacecraft contains the
precious solar wind particles in their original state,
protected from breakage and contamination with terrestrial
matter during launch and recovery," Burnett said.

On May 2, 2004, the spacecraft will fly past Earth,
positioning itself for daylight recovery. Four months later,
the sample-return capsule will make a dramatic Earth
entrance by parachuting toward the ground at the Utah
Testing and Training Range of the U.S. Air Force. Specially
trained helicopter pilots will catch the capsule in midair
to prevent the delicate samples from being disturbed by the
impact of a landing. The samples will then be preserved in a
special laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in
Houston, and allocated for scientific study over the next
century.

"Like all sample return missions, Genesis science really
begins when the spacecraft phase of the mission ends,"
Burnett said. "It's been a long coming, but we can't wait to
get to the analysis phase." Then, everything will be all
right.