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NASA launches solar science satellite
NASA`s Genesis satellite was launched on Wednesday on a mission to collect solar wind and return it to Earth, the first extraterrestrial material to be brought back since the Apollo moon landings.
NASA`s Genesis satellite was launched on Wednesday on a mission to collect solar wind and return it to Earth, the first extraterrestrial material to be brought back since the Apollo moon landings.
Solar wind is made up of material including gases and dust and could help to unlock more secrets of the solar system.
The wisp of material will be collected nearly 1 million miles from Earth. The robotic satellite was launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 12:13 p.m. EDT.
NASA tried five times last week to get Genesis off the ground but was frustrated first by technical concerns, then by rain and thundershowers spun off Tropical Storm Barry. NASA will try to make back-to-back launches with Thursday`s scheduled launch of space shuttle Discovery on a mission to take a new crew to the International Space Station.
The Genesis mission seeks to fill a gap in the scientific understanding of the solar system, which formed 4.6 billion years ago out of the same stellar dust the satellite seeks to collect.
"This mission will be the Rosetta Stone of planetary science data because it will show us the foundation by which we can judge how our solar system evolved," said Chester Sasaki, the Genesis project manager from NASA`s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Even after the formation of the planets, their moons, the comets and asteroids, about 99 percent of all the solar system`s matter remains in the sun, and scientists have never got their hands on any of the stuff.
"Until we actually get a sample of the sun, we cannot be sure of its exact composition," despite the best spectrographic readings, said Meenakshi Wadhwa, a cosmochemist at Chicago`s Field Museum.
Genesis will fly to a point between sun and Earth where the gravitational pull of the two bodies cancels one another out, creating a kind of parking orbit for the satellite, which is about the size of a small car.
Using five circular collection plates about the size of bicycle wheels, Genesis will spend about two years collecting solar molecular material thrown off the sun`s surface -- the so-called solar wind -- before heading back to Earth. It will not bag much, some 10-20 microns, about as much sand as you might get in your eye during a windy walk on the beach. But scientists think it could yield more than the hundreds of pounds of moon rocks returned from 1969 to 1972 during the Apollo missions.
"This is a small but precious amount of data. We`ll be looking at billions of atoms, and each one will tell us something about the origins of the solar system and everything in it today," said Donald Burnet, the California Institute of Technology scientist who is the project`s principal investigator.
Bureau Report
The wisp of material will be collected nearly 1 million miles from Earth. The robotic satellite was launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 12:13 p.m. EDT.
NASA tried five times last week to get Genesis off the ground but was frustrated first by technical concerns, then by rain and thundershowers spun off Tropical Storm Barry. NASA will try to make back-to-back launches with Thursday`s scheduled launch of space shuttle Discovery on a mission to take a new crew to the International Space Station.
The Genesis mission seeks to fill a gap in the scientific understanding of the solar system, which formed 4.6 billion years ago out of the same stellar dust the satellite seeks to collect.
"This mission will be the Rosetta Stone of planetary science data because it will show us the foundation by which we can judge how our solar system evolved," said Chester Sasaki, the Genesis project manager from NASA`s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Even after the formation of the planets, their moons, the comets and asteroids, about 99 percent of all the solar system`s matter remains in the sun, and scientists have never got their hands on any of the stuff.
"Until we actually get a sample of the sun, we cannot be sure of its exact composition," despite the best spectrographic readings, said Meenakshi Wadhwa, a cosmochemist at Chicago`s Field Museum.
Genesis will fly to a point between sun and Earth where the gravitational pull of the two bodies cancels one another out, creating a kind of parking orbit for the satellite, which is about the size of a small car.
Using five circular collection plates about the size of bicycle wheels, Genesis will spend about two years collecting solar molecular material thrown off the sun`s surface -- the so-called solar wind -- before heading back to Earth. It will not bag much, some 10-20 microns, about as much sand as you might get in your eye during a windy walk on the beach. But scientists think it could yield more than the hundreds of pounds of moon rocks returned from 1969 to 1972 during the Apollo missions.
"This is a small but precious amount of data. We`ll be looking at billions of atoms, and each one will tell us something about the origins of the solar system and everything in it today," said Donald Burnet, the California Institute of Technology scientist who is the project`s principal investigator.
Bureau Report