Genesis Capsule Crashes

[Joe Matt]

I saw an image of it with a guy next to it. Can't find it now. It's about 5 feet in diameter.

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by dlavery

- all we know so far is that the neither the drogue or main parachutes deployed, and it appears that the deployment mortar never fired to push the parachutes out of the spacecraft. We do not yet know why the mortar did not fire.

The rumor around building 198 is that the Li/SO2 battery may have passivated and couldn't provide enough charge to fire the pyros. I also heard that what cratered into the Utah desert isn't the Genesis payload, but the UFO that collided with the "real" Genesis payload on descent.

-Kevin

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by dlavery

- it is unknown at this time if the sample cannister has been breached. If the samples have been exposed to the atmosphere they will be highly contaminated. In that event, it is likely that all sceince wll be lost.

I thought the samples were expected to be "embedded" in the collection disks, and would thus be slightly protected from contamination by simple exposure to air (and/or dirt). They're not going to be the pristine samples of solar wind they ought to have been, of course, but there should still be plenty of useful information to be gotten.

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by JosephM

I saw an image of it with a guy next to it. Can't find it now. It's about 5 feet in diameter.

Click on image for CNN's coverage

^^ There's a pretty cool animation of what the helicopters would have done, had the parachutes deployed. Check it out.

[ahecht]

From another forum:

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Steve W

The only reason that it has worked for Canada is that everyone knows that if they invade Canada then they would be next to the US and the US won't let that happen. BTW we do have 3 planes, 2 tanks and a tug boat.

3 planes? I thought you only had one:

Originally Posted by T. Hoffman

Noting Warren's relatively close proximity to Canada, the Canadian prime minister, Karthik Kanagasabapathy (who mentors Team 1114 in his free time), called upon the Queen of England to launch a Royal Assault (357) against the Juggernauts, because the Canadian Air Force's lone Cessna was having engine trouble.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...40&postcount=4

Your Air Force can almost have its own airshow team now - "The Hummingbirds".

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by T. Hoffman

3 planes? I thought you only had one:


http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...40&postcount=4

Your Air Force can almost have its own airshow team now - "The Hummingbirds".

Well we call them planes. Some people call them ultralites.

[FizMan]

No no, he's right... we only have 1 plane. The other two were the sea-king helicopters, but they crashed and burned.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Max Lobovsky

they managed to mess up quite a few times on Mars

C'mon people. Where's the support? Why not say "I hope there's something salvageable so the science isn't completely lost" or "It's ashame what happened after so much time and effort put into it" rather than "Geez, NASA, another screwup" or "it's not the first time they've screwed up"

Let's be a a little more supportive of this great program we call NASA.

When was the last time you launched ANYTHING into space? Yeah, that's right, NEVER! So don't promote their failures when you haven't even attempted success.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

When was the last time you launched ANYTHING into space? Yeah, that's right, NEVER! So don't promote their failures when you haven't even attempted success.

Well actually, no, wait a minute... that only made it about three feet.

But I agree, stuff happens, being in FIRST everyone should know plenty about that. But just look at all of the successes that NASA has had as well, and I don't think anything, even not this, would be a real failure, this is just another lesson to learn from.

[Katie Reynolds]

David Lindstrom, Genesis program scientist, said NASA was "optimistic" about retrieving scientific data from the mission.

"We think we can remove most of the impurities from the surface and science will be possible," he said. "The solar wind particles are implanted within the collectors so the absolute surface is not all that critical. We are hopeful of getting science out of this."

... ...

Click for the rest of the story:

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

One comment on Slashdot intruiged me though- if the trigger mechanism for the parachute was a single-axis accelerometer, and something odd happened on re-entry (came in at the wrong vector or some other random variable), the accelerometer may have never felt the required force to deploy the parachute. In that case, would it have been possible to implement some kind of ground control override? Send up an RF signal to force the parachute to deploy?

The rumor that have been circulating around the JPL flight community for a few weeks has been shown to be true. The accelerometer was designed-in upside-down and couldn't detect the reentry deceleration.

-Kevin

[Gdeaver]

I understand that both the main and back up accelerometers where placed upside down. If so then it was a human systems failure. Similar thing constantly happen on our team.
Gary Deaver

[Mike]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

When was the last time you launched ANYTHING into space? Yeah, that's right, NEVER! So don't promote their failures when you haven't even attempted success.

Give me billions of dollars in Government Funding and then maybe I can try