The Genesis Probe -Clues to the Origin of the Solar System
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- pjacobs51
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more from Tech:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/01/the-genesis-pro.html
New solar wind samples, salvaged from collecting devices that survived the Genesis spacecraft crash in 2004, may help to resolve how the Sun and Solar System formed. The Genesis spacecraft was the first ever attempt to collect a sample of solar wind, and the first "sample return mission" to return from beyond the orbit of the Moon. It was launched on August 8, 2001, and crash-landed after a design flaw prevented the deployment of its drogue parachute.NASA's Genesis probe collected particles from the solar wind, a high-energy stream of plasma ejected from the Sun, over a 27-month period from December 2001 to April 2004. The results of the mission are detailed in the journal Science.
Genesis samples are the first extraterrestrial samples returned to Earth by NASA since the Apollo program, which ended in the early 1970s.
The collectors returned by the Genesis mission contain solar wind atoms which can be analyzed in sophisticated laboratory instruments to measure very precisely the composition of the Sun. Since the Sun contains 99% of the mass in the solar system, knowing its elemental and isotopic composition is a good average measure of the composition of the solar nebula at the time when the planets were forming. Genesis' solar data allow new insights in tracing the chemical evolution of diverse planetary samples, most of which came from a common starting material, the solar nebula.
