Any kind that reaches for the stars will no doubt have its fingertips scorched. Probably more than once.
One of NASA’s posts on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website is an iconic reminder of the accidents in our space travel history.
“A flying saucer from space crashed into the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters,” the photo description posted in November 2018 said, although NASA is not hinting at an alien visit here.
The smashed saucer, half buried in the desert sands, was actually the return capsule of the Genesis spacecraft. And it was not meant to land in such a brutal way.
Launched on August 8, 2001, the Genesis mission was the space agency’s ambitious attempt to send a spacecraft into our home star’s solar wind, collect samples, and return them to Earth.
By collecting data on the composition of the charged particles flowing from the Sun’s corona, the researchers hoped to be able to accurately determine the star’s composition and learn more about the elements that were present when the planets of the solar system were formed.
To bring us solar wind samples, the Genesis vessel was equipped with a sample return capsule containing a canister of solar wind material, collected when the vessel spent two years orbiting Lagrange point 1 – one of the places in space where the gravity of the earth and the sun are precisely balanced.
The craft caught the solar wind by expanding a series of collector arrays, each loaded with high-purity materials such as aluminum, sapphire, silicon, and even gold.
Artistic representation of the spacecraft with its arrays expanded. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
“ The materials we used in the Genesis collector arrays had to be physically strong enough to be launched without breaking; holding the sample while it was heated by the sun during collection; and so pure that we could analyze the solar wind elements after returning to Earth, ”explained project scientist Amy Jurewicz on September 3, 2004.
Five days later, that monster capsule and its precious arrays crashed into the ground in Utah at an estimated speed of 310 km / h (193 mph).
(USAF 388th Range Sqd., Genesis Mission, NASA)
What had to be done was quite different – 127 seconds after re-entering the atmosphere, a mortar would blow on board the capsule, releasing a temporary parachute to slow and stabilize the descent.
A main chute then had to be blown up, causing the capsule to descend gently into the Utah Test and Training Range.
In the crash photo you can see helicopters – they hovered nearby, ready to hold the capsule in the air and transport it directly to a cleanroom to avoid contamination of the samples.
None of these parachutes were deployed.
After thorough investigation, the error was traced back to a set of sensors, the size of the metal end of a pencil. They were installed backwards.
These tiny devices were supposed to detect the increasing g-forces as the capsule plummeted to the ground and trigger the deployment of the parachutes.
As you can imagine, the crash resulted in serious damage, breaking several arrays and contaminating the precious payload inside.
Once the monster capsule was retrieved from the heartbreaking site of its demise, the project team began to retrieve 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 monster capsule. Some of the tough collector materials survived, and researchers have managed to clean the surfaces without disturbing the embedded solar material.
Within three years, a series of articles on the Genesis findings were published. 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 is home to more than 99 percent of the material currently in our solar system, so it’s a good idea to get to know it better,” said Genesis lead researcher Don Burnett of California Institute of Technology in 2011.
“Although it was more challenging than expected, we answered some important questions, and like all successful missions, we generated many more.”
A version of this story was first published in November 2018.