[meteorite-list] NASA: Stardust Won't Need Dustpan

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Dec 18 23:08:25 2005
Message-ID: <200512190406.jBJ46qO16526_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3320168

NASA: Stardust won't need dustpan
By Katy Human
Denver Post
December 18, 2005

NASA is hoping - this time - for a softer landing.

When the space agency tried bringing back stellar dust from more than a
million miles away in September 2004, the capsule crash-landed in the
Utah desert, its contents shattering into 15,000 pieces.

This time, Stardust, carrying crumbs from a comet 242 million miles
away, should drift gently down onto the Utah desert in the wee hours of
Jan. 15.

"Everybody is confident in what we've designed and built and tested,"
said Joe Vellinga, Stardust program manager for Lockheed Martin Space
Systems in Jefferson County. "But everybody always worries about what we
haven't thought of."

Lockheed engineers designed and built the cometary explorer, and they
also were responsible for Genesis, the ill-fated NASA spacecraft that
hit Utah mud at about 200 mph 15 months ago.

Colorado engineers installed four switches backward, preventing Genesis'
parachutes from deploying to slow its descent, an investigation showed.

Stardust's switches - and all other hardware - were installed correctly,
Vellinga said.

NASA spent an additional $10 million to confirm that, running tests on a
mock-up of the spacecraft built with identical components, said Tom
Duxbury, Stardust project manager with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, Calif.

The agency also triple- checked the rest of the spacecraft's design,
after the Genesis "mishap" and the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster,
he said.

"The only question is that it was built almost 10 years ago, and it's
been in flight for seven years," Duxbury said. "There's no way to test
some of those components."

Stardust will hit Earth's atmosphere at 28,000 mph, faster than any
spacecraft before, creating a fireball that may be visible from most of
Nevada and Utah.

In 2000, when Stardust was on its outbound voyage, a powerful solar
flare damaged the spacecraft's star camera, used for navigation.
Scientists fretted for five days before successfully rebooting the device.

The cost of the Stardust mission - expected to
be about $210 million including the extra analysis - is worth it,
Duxbury said.

"What we learn from this is about our own personal existence, possibly
how we came to be," he said.

Space scientists believe comets delivered water and organic chemicals to
Earth billions of years ago, helping to create conditions that led to life.

"All the stuff we're made up of is stardust," the NASA scientist said.

Duxbury said that Genesis' hard landing actually increased his
confidence that Stardust would be OK.

The earlier mission hit exactly where NASA officials calculated it
should, he explained, and the contents were not spread for miles across
the desert floor - they remained inside the battered capsule.

"We are smaller than Genesis, and structurally more sound," Duxbury
said. "If we land hard, we're probably going to recover most, if not
all, our science."

For Genesis, the plan was to let the craft drift partway to Earth on
parachutes, before it was to be snatched in mid-air by helicopters,
Duxbury said. Genesis wasn't supposed to touch ground at all.

Stardust, by contrast, is designed to land on the ground at about 10
mph, Duxbury said. If its parachutes don't open, it'll hit at 175 mph.
Received on Sun 18 Dec 2005 11:06:52 PM PST