STUNT PILOTS TO CATCH SUN’S WISPS TODAY

After seven years, three mil­lion miles, and $260 mil­lion, Hollywood stunt pilots will have exactly one chance today to snag a return­ing NASA space probe.
“Genesis” is the space agency’s first attempt since the end of the Apollo Era to bring sam­ples back from the beyond in this case, a col­lec­tion of ions shorn from the solar wind. But the thin wafers of gold, dia­mond, sap­phire, and sil­i­con used to cap­ture the sam­ples are so del­i­cate, they’ll shat­ter if they hit plan­et­side.
Enter Dan Rudert, a heli­copter pilot who’s flown stunts and aer­ial cam­era runs for flicks like The Hulk and XXX. He’s one of two chopper-​​captains (one lead, and one backup) poised to grab the plum­met­ing 500-​​pound col­lec­tor before it hits the ground, and return it gen­tly to Utah’s Dugway Proving Ground.
19 miles above the ground, the cap­sule will open its first para­chute, slow­ing its speed to 410 miles per hour. A sec­ond, hang glider-​​esque chute will unfurl about a mile-​​and-​​a-​​half up. And then Rudert and com­pany will spring into action.
Flying just a bit above and behind the cap­sule at 38 miles per hour, Rudert will use an 18.5 foot-​​long pole to hook the chute’s lead lines. Once the link is made, a tiny explo­sive will fire a pin into the hook, secur­ing the con­nec­tion. The cap­sule will then be gen­tly plunked into a sealed con­tainer, and the whole pack­age will be brought to a clean room for decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion.
NASA sci­en­tists believe the sam­ples will be their best chance yet to get a detailed pic­ture of what the Sun is made of. And by bet­ter under­stand­ing the makeup of the Solar System’s grandaddy, researchers believe they’ll get a much clearer pic­ture of how the neighborhood’s young­sters like the Earth and Mars were born and grew up.
That is, if every­thing goes right at Dugway. If Rudert doesn’t make the grab or the chute doesnt open, or a hun­dred other things go south it’s mis­sion over. And that would send a whole bunch of space sci­en­tists scram­bling for the Drano. Collecting Genesis’ itty-​​bitty sam­ples just two hundred-​​thousandths of a gram has been beyond bur­den­some. The probe flew a mil­lion and a half miles towards the Sun, to col­lect its solar ions. Then it swung a mil­lion miles past the Earth, so it could be prop­erly posi­tioned to ren­dezvous with the Hollywood pilots over Utah. Talk about mak­ing the first take count.
THERE’S MORE: Rats. Damn. This sucks: Genesis has “crashed to Earth… after its para­chute failed to deploy,” the AP is report­ing.
“It wasn’t imme­di­ately known whether [Genesis’] cos­mic sam­ples had been destroyed,” the wire ser­vice says.
CNN’s Miles O’Brien is blog­ging it up with the lat­est on the crash.

September 8th, 2004 | Space | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.