Genesis

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Genesis was sent to catch a piece of the Sun. Launched on 8 August 2001, it travelled to the L1 point between the Earth and the Sun, opened a set of ultra-pure collector wafers, and spent about two and a half years exposed to the solar wind — the thin stream of atoms blowing out from the Sun — letting those particles embed themselves in its tiles. The goal was to capture pristine solar material and measure precisely what the Sun, and therefore the original cloud that formed the whole Solar System, is made of. In 2004 it closed up and flew home, the first mission to return samples from beyond the Moon. Then came disaster: on 8 September 2004, as the capsule fell toward the Utah desert, its parachute never opened — a deceleration sensor had been installed backwards — and it slammed into the ground at over 300 kilometres per hour, shattering many of the fragile collectors and contaminating others with desert soil. It looked like a catastrophe. But painstaking cleanup in the laboratory salvaged enough ultra-clean material to succeed: Genesis pinned down the oxygen and nitrogen isotopes of the Sun, revealing that it differs subtly from the planets — a vital clue to how the Solar System formed.

1. 2001Launch toward the L1 pointLaunch

   Sets out to collect atoms of the solar wind and return them to Earth.

2. 2001Collectors opened at L1Arrival

   Reaches its station between Earth and Sun and exposes ultra-pure wafers to the solar wind.

3. 2004Collectors closedMilestone

   Seals its samples after about 850 days of catching solar-wind particles.

4. 2004Crash landing in UtahImpactor

   The parachute fails and the capsule slams into the desert, yet salvaged fragments still reveal the Sun's composition.

Images

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