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The Genesis spacecraft continues its mission collecting solar wind material expelled from the Sun. Telemetry from the Genesis spacecraft indicates that all spacecraft subsystems are reporting nominal operation. Last Wednesday the Genesis spacecraft performed a seven minute burn. This station keeping maneuver was a planned operation designed to keep the Genesis spacecraft within it designed orbit. Including the station keeping maneuver, total propellant used during the entire mission thus far are 17.67 kilograms. Genesis' sample return capsule battery temperature is still below predicts, at about 50ºC. While the temperature is expected to increase as the spacecraft moves towards perihelion, the Genesis team is confident it will remain well within operational parameters for the remainder of the mission. Recent solar activity has called for the "high solar speed" collector array to be deployed 75% of the time, and the E-Array, which handles coronal mass ejections, 21% of the time. The arrays in the Bulk collection handled the remaining 4% of solar activity harvesting. Genesis Vital Statistics: 678 days since launch; 292 days to planned completion of solar particle collection; 449 days to Genesis return to Earth. Related Links Genesis Mission SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express 
Genesis' First Year A Success
San Francisco - Dec 10, 2002As scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory begin analysis of first-year data from the solar wind probe Genesis they have determined the spacecraft is working so well that they are considering possibilities for research beyond the planned 2004 mission completion date. Three of Genesis' instruments were designed and built at Los Alamos. Along with colleagues from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, Los Alamos scientists have been analyzing data from Genesis to study solar wind in more detail than ever before and will eventually return solar wind particle samples to earth in September 2004. |
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