Spacecraft to Bring Back Bits of Sun

krugdm writes: "NASA will be sending up a robotic spacecraft named "Genesis" which will bring back specks of solar wind in order to study what the solar system may have been like when it was first forming." According to the article, this will be the "first U.S. spacecraft since the Apollo moon ships to return samples from outer space," and the planned recovery involves a Hollywood-sounding helicopter catch of the reentry pod.

Comments

Oh boy, more customs forms!!!

[einhverfr]

Remember that when the Appolo astronauts returned, they had to fill out customs forms for the moon rocks. I want to see what the solar wind customs forms look like... Assuming, of course, the craft lands in international waters....

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It's not hollywood.

[NNKK]

Helicopter and planes have been able to catch capsules falling to earth since the 60's, it's difficult, but quite possible.
The Corona project, the first real useful spy camera in space, used a system whereby the capsule containing the film was dropped to earth at a predetermined time, and planes were standing by to catch it.
If they failed, it would stay afloat for a couple hours to give them a chance at recovery, and after that would let water in so the Soviet's couldn't get it.

Re:It's not hollywood.

[tesserae]

You're right about the history of midair returns, but this one is different: the parachute is a parafoil, a ram-air inflated deployable flying wing. AFAIK this is the first time a spacecraft will be recovered in the air under a parafoil...

It makes a lot of sense: the parafoil gives a much lower rate of descent than an equivalent-weight round parachute could, and also gives a large horizontal velocity component -- so the relative closing speed of the helicopter is minimized, and it doesn't have to be in such a dive, either. IIRC the vertical rate is about 13 ft/sec, and horizontal is around three times that.

It's a pretty cool system; I got to work with it a bit, and saw quite a few of the test flights.

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