What Genesis Solar Particles Can Tell Us
Posted on: Wednesday, 22 September 2004, 06:00 CDT
UC Davis/AP -- The recent crash of NASA's Genesis space probe may have looked like bad news for scientists, but its cargo of particles captured from the sun should still yield useful information, according to Qing-Zhu Yin, a planetary scientist at UC Davis.
Yin, who is not directly affiliated with the Genesis mission, studies the composition of meteorites to learn about the formation of the solar system. Like the Genesis capsule, meteorites have a hard landing on the Earth, but can still yield useful information, he said.
By looking at the ratio of oxygen-16, -17 and -18 isotopes in the solar particles, scientists should be able to test theories about how the sun and planets formed. Oxygen-16 is by far the most common. The Earth, moon, Mars and some meteorites all have slightly different ratios of the three isotopes.
The oxygen makeup of the sun, which contains about 99.9 percent of all the mass in the solar system, is much harder to measure. The Genesis spacecraft was built to answer that question by collecting particles blown out from the sun.
In a "Perspectives" article in the Sept. 17 issue of the journal Science, Yin describes new theories about local variations in oxygen isotopes in the vast dust and gas cloud around the young sun.
Free oxygen was released when ultraviolet light hit carbon monoxide gas. Because oxygen-16 was so abundant, it was released mostly near the surface of the cloud, but breakdown of carbon monoxide containing less abundant oxygen-17 or -18 continued deeper into the cloud.
Free oxygen and hydrogen formed water that froze onto dust grains and eventually formed into planets, preserving the oxygen-17 and -18 signature, Yin said.
The models predict that the Sun itself should have a much lower ratio of oxygen-17 and -18 to oxygen-16 than the rocky planets, a prediction that can be tested by Genesis and future missions.
What's Next for Genesis?
NASA will soon send its damaged Genesis space capsule back to Colorado, where builders at Lockheed Martin will join other experts in trying to figure out why it crashed in Utah earlier this month.
The capsule will be trucked in the next week or so from the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah to the Lockheed Martin Space Systems facility southwest of Denver, NASA spokesman Don Savage said Tuesday.
The capsule crashed Sept. 8 when its parachutes failed to open at the end of a three-year, $264 million mission to study the solar system. The 5-foot-diameter capsule was traveling 193 mph when it hit the ground, burying itself about 2 feet in mud.
Scientists say they found some pieces intact and are optimistic their work was not a total loss. The capsule held billions of charged atoms that could help explain how the sun was formed 4.5 billion years ago.
NASA is investigating why the parachutes did not open. Engineers are focusing on electronic controls or sensors that were supposed to trigger explosives that release the chutes.
Helicopters flown by Hollywood stunt pilots were supposed to grab Genesis' parachute with a hook almost a mile above the desert and lower the capsule gently to the ground. But they never had a chance.
A 16-member NASA Mishap Investigation Board has been formed that includes experts on parachute systems, pyrotechnic devices, computer software, electrical systems, avionics and aerodynamics.
Engineers at Lockheed Martin, which built the capsule, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have begun sorting and assembling records and data relating to the Genesis mission.
One Lockheed official recently suggested a faulty electronics box or a bad battery could have caused the parachute failure. Savage said the investigative panel will consider all options.
About Genesis
Genesis is the agency's first sample return mission since the last Apollo mission in 1972, and the first ever to return material collected beyond the Moon.
The science collection began November 30, 2001, with the opening of the spacecraft's science canister and the extension of special collector arrays to catch atoms from the solar wind.
The atoms it has collected, believed to have preserved the composition of the solar nebula "cloud" from which our solar system developed, will help scientists better understand conditions in the distant past before Earth and other planets formed.
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