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Chopper Pilots Train to Catch Space Probe
mav[LAG] writes "Hollywood helicopter pilots have been training for a unique catch planned for September: they will hopefully snag in midair the parachute of a capsule dropped by the Genesis project before it touches down in the Utah desert. The capsule will contain collector arrays of solar particles that should, er, shed some light on the origins of the solar system."
They have been doing bizarre mid-air catches for decades. Early spy satalites got their film to the ground by dropping them. Specially modified bombers with nets on poles sticking out of their noses would catch them in mid-air. Though I don't know why it doesn't have air-bags.
This signiture copied from somewhere.
Why is this hard?
i es/categ ory_satellites.htm
I understand that the early spy satellites did not have CCD's, but only Cameras, and they'd drop the Films to earth (reentry and all) and those would be caught in flight by a modified plane, developed and looked at.
That was with Slide Rules and stuff, no serious computers then, and no helicopters, I think. Why is it hard today?
Quote: "A special feature of the Discoverer Program was that the satellites were to eject capsules after a certain number of orbits. The capsule was supposed to reenter the atmosphere and release a parachute so that the capsule could be recovered. Specially modified aircraft were fitted with two long booms which extended from the aircraft and had a rope stretched between the tips of the booms. If everything went according to plan, the rope would catch the shrouds of the parachute of the de-orbited capsule."
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Er...look at the date. Those are artist's renditions of the recovery. It hasn't happened yet.
Since they decided to use an artists rendition, the question still remains, who was the blind, armless, computer-illiterate who put that pic together?
Paul Lenhart writes words!
NASA has used an airplane to snag sounding rocket payloads on descent for years. Affectionately named the "Happy Hooker" because that's just what it did, latched a big hook onto the parachute.
As part of a university program that launched a joint venture sounding rocket from Wallops Island, this wasn't an available option for us. We constructed the payload to be watertight and boyant, and hired a tuna-boat to go out and pick the thing out of the Atlantic.
*cheers* to all SPIRIT teammates if they happen to read this. It was an outstanding success.
The most exciting use of it, in my opinion, was in the Arctic for Operation COLD FEET. A summary is given here, and a good book on it is here (or at least a review of the book---I've read the book, by the way, and I couldn't put it down until I finished it).
Because NASA is, first and foremost, a civilian agency.