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Dugway Landing Will Conclude Science Craft's 3-Year Space Trip

Posted on: Thursday, 15 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

TOOELE -- Years are winding down to months as NASA officials and Tooele County residents gear up for the arrival of the NASA Genesis Capsule in Dugway.

"It's a historical event," said Mary Beth Murrill of the NASA/ JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) community relations office, based in Pasadena, Calif. "We don't want people to be surprised when it comes [to Dugway]."

The Genesis mission gathered a sample of solar wind ions from the sun. The sample is equal in weight to a few grains of salt, but that small amount will be "a real treasure trove to scientists," Murrill said.

The ions are particles from the outer layer of the sun and contain the basic elements, such as hydrogen and oxygen, that formed the planets. Analyzing the ions may ultimately help determine the origins of the solar system, said Don Sweetnam, Genesis project manager, at a luncheon in Tooele.

The NASA Genesis mission was launched in August 2001 from the Kennedy Space Center, and will land in Dugway on Sept. 8 at 9:55 a.m.

The capsule will come speeding down to the Earth, decelerating due to friction with the atmosphere and the release of the capsule's parachute. In a matter of minutes, two helicopter pilots will have five chances to catch the capsule before it collides with the ground at the Utah Testing and Training Range, or UTTR, in Dugway. The pilots practiced the routine in April and will resume daily practice on Aug. 27.

Even in outer space, the Genesis spacecraft has been relatively close to Earth, roughly three times the distance from the Earth to the moon, Sweetnam said. The spacecraft did not need to venture near the sun because solar particles are ejected in all directions. The Apollo 16 mission in 1972 gathered a much smaller sample of ions by laying gold foil on the moon's surface.

The capsule unfolded to reveal four collection panels -- some gold, others made of silicon -- to catch the various solar wind ions. The capsule orbited for 884 days before the panels were retracted on April 2. Since then, gravity has pulled the craft back to Earth.

UTTR was picked for a landing site because it has 58,000 square feet of restricted air space, an advanced tracking system and a vast landing space. Dugway also will be the landing site for NASA's Stardust mission in 2006.

jdoria@sltrib.com

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