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Crashed Spacecraft Yields Data on Solar Wind
Hugh Pickens writes "After the Genesis mission spent 27 months in space gathering tiny samples from different types of solar wind, Hollywood stunt pilots swooped in with a helicopter to catch the falling capsule when it returned to earth. Unfortunately the spacecraft's parachute did not open, and the spacecraft ploughed a hole into the desert. Now scientists are starting to recover data from the salvageable pieces of Genesis. Nature Magazine reports that an analysis of isotopes of neon and argon shows that the elements of main interest to the researchers have the same isotopic signature in the solar wind as in the Sun itself. Because dirt contains relatively little neon and argon, the current Science study wasn't affected too much by contamination and the the team remains hopeful that they will be able to get results on oxygen and nitrogen isotopes from the mission."
Surely it picked up alien spores that are now loose in our deserts. Isn't this how many bad sci-fi movies begin?!
No, accelerometer mounted in the wrong orientation
i remember reading the thread on fark and laughing so hard, that i had tears running down my face...
scroll halfway down - it's comedy in realtime
argon makes up about 1% of our atmosphere while neon takes up a smaller amount of our air. though I suspect that the gas was contained enough so that had enough to sample sections that had little or no visible contamination. had there been any real significant contamination from gases in our air, it is just as likely that the gases in the samples escaped, thus there wouldn't be much to sample. in addition to that, we know the general composition of the sun which shouldn't deviate too much from the composition of soalr wind so if we find something statistically off about the oxygen/nitrogen composition then we know that it is likely that the samples were contaminated.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
TFA explains that they are publishing a series of papers. The quoted paragraph is about results on Neon and Argon which were published in Science. Other results were published elsewhere, such as Space Science Reviews.
I found it interesting that the article describes how Murphy's Law was not as general as most of us know it, stating more specifically that things that can be installed backwards eventually will be installed backwards, and that this is precisely what caused the parachutes to fail to deploy.
Also can't say that I knew Murphy was a "rocket scientist", literally. How ironic. You'd think NASA would have learned from him by now?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Genesis was no failure. Dr. Marcus was indeed very proud over it.
I watched it on NASA TV when it came in. It had a pretty good wobble, coming in at a 90 degree angle relative to the earth. Folks had kinda figured that it was going to do a pretty good job of splattering itself on the desert floor. Was a pretty good surprise when it just dug a divot and stayed pretty much intact. Some folks think that most of the lake beds are hard as rocks through and through. Some are not so.
Back in the 60's, legends Chuck Yeager and Neil Armstrong took a Beech twin up for some landing practice on some of the salt flats. Neil set up on a approach for one such flat, on his judgment that it was dry and stable.. Yeager, being the "desert rat" knew of certain flats that stay muddy under the salt crusts, and the one they set up to land was just that. He told Neil that he should abort and go find another flat. Neil, being the analytical computer, declared that it would hold. The Beech's tires touched down on the crust, and proceeded to keep going down into the muddy substrate, sinking up to the struts, coming to a halt.
So the Beech sat there shaking and vibrating, engines going at full throttle. Chuck, ever being the wisecracking pilot turned and said to Armstrong "I told you so". Neil turned to respond, and his computer for a brain clicked and went kerCHUNK! He had nothing to say in return. They hiked to another flat so a DC3 could pick them up on the run.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
From what I remember about the original experiment. The colector plates that were exposed to the solar wind used layers to trap the solar wind particles. They were driven deep into the samples by the speed of the solar wind. Argon while present in the earths atmosphere is not as told by the researchers in the soil. Exposer to the air itself wont much contaminate the samples as there is no way to DRIVE the gas particles into the sample medium.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
"They've switched back to metric again without telling us."
"Because dirt contains relatively little neon and argon, the current Science study wasn't affected too much by contamination and the the team remains hopeful that they will be able to get results on oxygen and nitrogen isotopes from the mission."
Does the "Five-second Rule" apply here?