Genesis in its birthplace, Lockheed Martin Astronautics cleanroom near Denver, Colorado. These could be the delivery instructions slapped on the side of the Genesis spacecraft, neatly wrapped and ready for a clean room rollout at month s end here at Lockheed Martin Astronautics. Then, with its bounty of solar particles in tow, Genesis hauls back the goods for Earth reentry and a midair recovery over the Utah desert in September 2004. Genesis is the first NASA sample-return mission since Apollo astronauts brought back lunar materials in 1969 through 1972, said Nick Smith, chief system engineer for the spacecraft s flight system.
Genesis is truly a planetary spacecraft.
I still have those early sketches. The spacecraft will enter a halo orbit about the L-1 point, Smith said, outside the influence of Earth s magnetic field. While loitering around this unreal real estate, Genesis will expose sets of ultra-pure silicon wafers that will snag pure solar wind material . Our Sun is a holdout. That is, it contains well over 99 percent of all the material in the solar system .