Slashdot Mirror
Genesis: Data in good condition
Oxidation writes "Space.com is reporting that the Genesis satellite crash isn't as bad as it appeared to be in the first place. Furthermore, a prime particle-gathering device "appears intact" states Don Sevilla. (Genesis payload recovery leader at NASA's JPL)"
From the beginning I didn't think this was quite as bad as people had feared. The worse case scenerio is that we can only detect particles that are unique to the study area.
No matter how much dirt you pour into that system, any particles that are not common on earth would still be a very interesting finding!
"It is amazing given the amount of breach in the canister just how clean it is inside" Sevilla said. "We're not talking about great clods of dirt."
As much as they were overestimating the initial amount of damage, I think they are underestimating now. No matter how little amount of dust has entered into that system, it still has contamination. Contamination is like pregnancy. Either it is, or it isn't. "Genesis brought back a tiny sampling of the raw material of the Sun, a sample weighing no more than a few grains of salt." Likely many particles that were captured in space are similiar the particles here on earth; however, with the contamination I am not sure how you can seperate the true origin of the particles... especially when such small amounts are involved. Earth dust >>> sun dust.
Can you tell which of these are covered with space particles and which are covered with space dirt?
No. That's like saying a parking lot is too contaminated with leaves to do a proper study of car color.
OK, maybe one of you lab rats can answer this but...
Call me irresponsible, but this guy went to all the effort to cover himself, then he leans over WITHOUT A MASK to work on a plate full of DUST!
I need a mask!
Frank W. Miller
Who is going to verify their findings? What if this is all just some smoke and mirror news stories now so we all thing "yea they'll get something for the $260 million spent" only to never ever hear about it again.
Before the thing even entered the atmosphere we had JPLers saying ANY crash would destroy the experiments. Well we got 200+ mph into the earth, split open, dust everywhere, broken little bits but everything is going to be A OK.
There's a difference between "we can get useful scientific information from it" and "A-OK".
There's also a difference between dust and other contaminants deposited at low speed and what's mostly monatomic gas implanted at high speed (look up "ion implantation" in a semiconductor fabrication glossary for further discussion of this).
Processing will get a lot more difficult, as they have a bucketful of dust-contaminated shards instead of nice, organized, uncontaminated collection plates, but it's far from impossible.
Just not an option the mission team would have chosen if it could possibly be avoided.