NASA is playing down concerns about the January 2006 return of the comet probe Stardust despite similarities with the Genesis sample-return capsule that crashed to Earth on 8 September after its parachutes failed to open - thwarting much-publicised plans to capture the canister in mid-air.
The 205kg (450lb) capsule containing 30 micrograms of solar wind particles crashed into the Utah desert at 310km/h after failing to deploy its drogue parachute, which was to have extracted a parafoil. A helicopter was waiting to snag the parafoil and retrieve the capsule in mid-air.
The failure may have been caused by a battery problem detected soon after launch on the $264 million mission in August 2001. The samples, captured over months in space on fragile hexagonal silicon-wafer arrays, are likely to be contaminated.
The capsule's parachutes were supplied by Pioneer Aerospace, which also provided the parachutes for the Stardust mission to return samples from the tail of comet Wild-2. NASA is less concerned about its Stardust capsule because it is designed for a soft landing in the Utah desert.
Genesis was intended to recover pure material from the Sun. "Whether we can recover any of the science from this remains to be seen," says Chris Jones, director of solar system exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
TIM FURNISS / LONDON
Source: Flight International