Genesis

Genesis was part of NASA's Discovery program. Its objective was to fly to the Earth-Sun L1 point and spend two years collecting samples of the solar wind.

A follow on to such experiments as the solar wind collectors exposed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts, Genesis would allow scientists to determine the chemical and isotopic composition of the Sun. The collected samples were to be physically returned to Earth (air-snatch recovery over Utah) and analyzed in ground-based laboratories. Among the goals were to study why the oxygen isotopic composition seems to vary in the solar system, accurate measurement of argon, xenon and neon abundances, and isotope ratio abundance measurements accurate to one percent for a broad range of elements.

The spacecraft and sample return capsule were built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics; mass was 494 kg dry (including the 220 kg return capsule), 636 kg at launch. The craft was 1.3 m high with a 1.52 m diameter capsule, and had a 6.8 m span when deployed. The vehicle was to enter a 6-month-period halo orbit around L1 with a radius of 800,000 km when it arrived on station. The craft carried a monopropellant hydrazine propulsion system, and a sample return capsule with deployable sample collection plates and an ion concentrator that rejected protons (80 percent of the solar wind) in favor of trace elements.

The wide angle collector was a circular mosaic of one meter diameter consisting of many hexagonal tiles made of diamond, gold, ultra-pure silicon, sapphire, aluminum or germanium. All kinds of ions were to be implanted in the wide angle collector whereas the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen ions were to be focused onto the concentrated-ion collector made up of hexagonal shaped diamond or silicon carbide tiles. The focused enhancement of these ions was necessary since the collecting wafers may contain nontrivial amounts of earthly contamination of these elements. This focusing was enabled by a parabolic mirror, with the positive voltages confined to numerous tiny segments on its surface. The paraboloid was to focus very little of the solar light/heat. A total of 10-20 micrograms of ions were to be collected by both collectors during the 30 months of exposure. The ion spectrometer was to monitor all species with energy greater than about 1 keV, and the electron spectrometer the smaller energy range electrons. (The solar wind speed was about 400 km/s and the protons in it were at about 1.0 keV with the heavier ions and the electrons having energies proportional to their masses.) The spectrometer data were to be telemetered in the S-band, and the re-entering sample canister was to parachute over Utah state in early September 2004, where it was to be grabbed by a helicopter.

The Project Scientist and Principal Investigator for Genesis was Donald Burnett, California Institute of Technology, and the Lead Investigator for the concentrated-ion collector and the two spectrometers was Roger Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The returned samples was to be stored at Johnson Space Center for analysis and distribution. The Project Manager for the mission was Chester Sasaki of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Mass: 636 kg (1,402 lb).

• 2001 November 16 - Genesis, L1 Orbit Insertion -
  

• 2004 April 1 - Genesis, End of Science Collection -
  

• 2004 May 1 - Genesis, Earth Flyby, Successful -
  

• 2004 September 8 - Genesis, Return To Earth -