Genesis

Mission Profile

Genesis was a NASA sample return mission launched on 8 August 2001 aboard a Delta II 7326-9.5 to collect particles of the solar wind at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point and return them to Earth for laboratory analysis. The spacecraft spent 884 days at L1 deploying collector arrays of diamond, silicon, sapphire, and gold foil to capture solar wind ions before returning its capsule on 8 September 2004. Unfortunately the capsule's parachute failed to deploy due to an inverted accelerometer sensor and it impacted the Utah desert at 311 km/h, shattering the collector arrays. Scientists nonetheless recovered microscopic material from the fragments and successfully extracted solar elemental abundances, revealing that the Sun contains more oxygen-16 than Earth's rocks and providing new insights into solar system formation.