Posted on 08/19/2004 10:14:26 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SALT LAKE CITY - The Genesis space capsule carrying solar wind particles will be plucked from nearly a mile above the Utah desert by stunt helicopter pilots who've replicated the retrieval, without fumbles, in nearly a dozen practice runs.
"It's very exciting to be a civilian helicopter pilot and have the opportunity to work with NASA (news - web sites)," said Dan Rudert, a stunt pilot from Santa Ana, Calif., who rated the difficulty of the maneuver at an 8 or 9 on a scale to 10.
Rudert spoke Thursday during a briefing with scientists on NASA television. The other helicopter pilot was filming in Chicago for "Batman 4."
Officials said the pair were among the few helicopter pilots qualified and willing to take on a difficult high-altitude retrieval, and that they've been practicing for months.
In their regular jobs, the pilots also drop water buckets on wildfires and have rescued rangers from Wyoming's Grand Teton peaks.
Two helicopters will be used, one as a backup. One will trail 400 feet of cable and a hook to intercept the Genesis space capsule, which will float to Earth Sept. 8 at about 9 mph on a parasail over an Air Force bombing range the size of Rhode Island.
The space capsule has been outside the earth's magnetic shield for three years, collecting solar wind particles that could explain how the sun formed an estimated 4.5 billion years ago and what keeps it fueled.
"We're bringing back a piece of the sun," said Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "That's going to give us some fundamental understanding of its origin."
It will take at least six months to analyze particles no bigger than a grain of salt and captured on 5-foot disks, each with hexagons of gold, sapphire, silicone and diamond, said Don Burnett, Genesis principal investigator at California Institute of Technology.
The capsule has been moving in tandem with Earth as it orbits the sun. On Thursday it was about 750,000 miles over the surface, traveling home at 600 mph. It will pick up speed rapidly as Earth's gravitational pull brings it closer, hitting a top speed of 24,600 mph.
The atmosphere will slow the descent, and the parasail will deploy at 20,000 feet, bringing down the capsule gently.
The capsule would crash into Utah's west desert if helicopters fail to hook it. Depending on what it hits, that could damage the capsule and its solar samples, but Rudert said he was confident the retrieval will go smoothly, even in bad weather, when radar can be used to track capsule movements.
Andromeda Strain?
They used to catch spy satellite film canisters over the Pacific
Heck yeah, they did!
Corona, I believe it was..
Yep! Snagged film drops right out of space.
http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/Programs/corona.html
Corona
including Discoverer, Corona (KH-1, KH-2, KH-3, KH-4, KH-4A, KH-4B), Argon (KH-5), Lanyard (KH-6)
The Corona, Argon, and Lanyard satellites were U.S. photographic surveillance satellites used from the late 50's through the early 70's. The satellites were designed to assess how rapidly the Soviet Union was producing long-range bombers and ballistic missiles, and where they were being deployed. The programs' worldwide photographic coverage was also used to produce maps and charts for the Department of Defense and other U.S. government mapping programs.
The satellites used film canisters that were returned to earth in capsules (a.k.a. "buckets") for evaluation. These capsules were designed to be recovered by a specially equipped aircraft during parachute descent, but were also designed to float to permit recovery from the ocean. All film was black-and-white, with the exception of some small samples of infrared and color film carried on some missions as experiments.
At General Dynamics back in the 1980s we used to snag cruise missles with helicopters in midair at the end of test flights. At Rockwell we looked at using flying cranes to snag reusable rocket stages midair as well. It can be done reliably.
Show Time!!!
Capture attempt coming up... Live
SPLAT!!! No way to catch it today.
Today,, it looks like chute failed , and spacecraft tumbled to earth and implanted about half of itself in the ground. It did not appear to break up on impact... so hopefully some of the good stuff is intact.. stand by
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