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By JOHN ANTCZAKAssociated Press WriterLOS ANGELES (AP) -- The investigation into the crash of NASA's $264 million Genesis spacecraft in Utah last month is focusing on the discovery of a design error that resulted in improper orientation of switches that were supposed to detect its entry into Earth's atmosphere and deploy its parachutes. "The design drawings are not correct," Michael G. Ryschkewitsch, chairman of the Mishap Investigation Board, said Friday. He emphasized that the findings were not complete.Genesis captured atoms and ions of the solar wind during nearly three years in space and was supposed to carefully bring them to...

SALT LAKE CITY - NASA (news - web sites) scientists said Friday they have recovered some critical pieces of the Genesis space capsule intact and are optimistic the wreckage will yield valuable information about the origins of the solar system. "We should be able to meet many, if not all, of our science goals," said physicist Roger C. Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Genesis capsule spent 2 1/2 years gathering solar atoms, but crashed while returning to Earth on Wednesday, slamming into the ground at nearly 200 mph after its parachutes failed to open. It cracked open...

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah, Sept. 8 - NASA's $264 million Genesis mission came to a sudden and violent end on Wednesday morning, when a capsule returning with samples of the Sun slammed into the desert here at nearly 200 miles an hour after its parachutes failed to open. Two helicopters flown by Hollywood stunt pilots had been hovering in the area to catch the capsule in midair as it glided gently over the desert at 25 m.p.h. under a large parafoil parachute. The stuntmen never had the chance. The capsule crashed in the Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With NASA's broken Genesis capsule stuck in the Utah desert and its shuttle assembly building battered by a hurricane at Cape Canaveral, the U.S. space agency defended its budget and mission on Wednesday. NASA chief Sean O'Keefe talked hopefully at a Senate hearing about returning the three-ship shuttle fleet to flight, more than 18 months after the fatal disintegration of space shuttle Columbia. But he was also badgered by questions about maintenance at the main launch facility in Florida, its budget problems and the agency's long-term goal of returning humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars....

A man takes a close-up look at the return capsule from NASA's Genesis spacecraft mission after it crashed into the earth in the Utah desert when its parachute failed to open, September 8, 2004 in this image from NASA video. The space capsule, returning solar particles to Earth after a three-year mission that probed the origins of the solar system, crashed in the Utah desert before it could be captured in a mid-air recovery, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Wednesday. The silver, disc-shaped capsule containing 'star dust' was jettisoned as planned by the Genesis spacecraft but its...

PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - A space capsule returning solar particles to earth has crashed in the Utah desert before it could be captured in a mid-air recovery by a Hollywood stunt helicopter pilot, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Wednesday.

failure!

In a meeting of the cinematic with the scientific, Hollywood helicopter stunt pilots will try to snatch a returning NASA space probe out of the air on Wednesday morning before it hits the ground. The probe's cargo — atomic bits of the Sun collected during more than two years in outer space — is the first extraterrestrial material that NASA has brought back to Earth since Apollo 17 astronauts collected rocks from the moon in 1972. Scientists hope the material will tell them about the solar system's primordial building materials of gas and dust that later turned into planets. "The...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Genesis set to return to EarthBy Philip ChienSPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished September 7, 2004 The Genesis spacecraft is returning home tomorrow after a whirlwind tour a million miles from Earth.     Launched in August 2001, Genesis was sent on a boomerang-shaped path a million miles away. The path was chosen to put Genesis outside the Earth's immediate neighborhood in a gravitationally stable place where the spacecraft could be "parked" for a couple of years.     Genesis has five super-pure panels made of aluminum, gold, silicon, synthetic diamond and other materials.     The panels collected just 10 micrograms of particles...

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...