It was only traveling at 100miles/hour

 

So much planning and then the parachute doesn't work.

 

Press conference in about 1 hour.

Are you serious they missed it?

 

Someone really dropped the ball on that one!

the parachute didnt go off.... that sucks, there's no nice way of putting it!

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3638926.stm

for full story

 

desert contanimation could ruin results.

What a shame. Hopefully there is at least some of the collectors that haven't been exposed to the desert.

Someone really dropped the ball on that one!

No, not the ball, Genesis.

What a shame. Hopefully there is at least some of the collectors that haven't been exposed to the desert.

I was really disapointed when I just saw that they didn't catch it. One thing I remember, blike, is that the plan was intitialy to slow it down to around 9mph before catching it because even at 9mph they thought the crass could ruin the whole thing. Obviously, that was planning for the worst that could happen during a 9mph crash, but still, 100mph means there probably is very little chance of uncontaminated samples. Very disapointing.

it dug its own crater in the ground, however a well build container could have been able to withstand that, however they werent planning for this, so the containers might not have been that strong.

 

any evidence they have will probably have been effected by desert sand.

 

why are there always faults in this stuff?

 

whenever you build electronics, it never works the first time, but you would have thought that these things were tested enough to know that this wouldnt happen, such a basic mistake... the parachute?

That is such a waste.

Such a wast indeed. I was hoping for something good from the return of it. Now...nothing

JPL's website reports that impact was 193 mph, but they have hopes of obtaining uncontaminated material. It doesn't look like they've written it off quite yet.

many different sources say different speed, so far ranging between 100 - 193 MPH, it is impossible to tell, they are all estimates, some knocked up a bit to make it more dramatic, chances are the lower speeds are more realistic, for that reason.

bbc tells us that it was somewhere round 190. It still doesnt matter. I can't beleive they havent thought of the worst case scenario where the parachutes fails to deploy.

i cant see how such a basic system in a £140 millioion project can fail, maybe if i go and work for NASA at least the basics will be right.

 

what happened to testing?

back-up system?

they should have stopped this from ever happening in the first place.

 

easy to say in hind-sight??

 

NO, this is basic, pre-flight testing which should have happened, this is NASA's fault, this was not an accident, it was poor planning and terrible testing.

Yeah, I think cnn said it was 240 million. Awesome, 240 million, gone. Your tax dollars at work. Wish this occurred before the "do we spend enough on space exploration" thread happened.

 

In all honesty, this isn't a sarcastic comment but I've been thinking: Is there any other area in science where you can spend 240 million on a single project and then simple go: "Oops" ?

it was probably $240Million and £240 million

 

who cares? it was a lot of money wated, thats the main point.

to be honest, even if they did catch dust from the sun, i cant see how they could analyse it and come out with results about how the universe was formed.

 

It wasn't about how the universe was formed it was a mission to better understand the processes dominating the formation of the solar system. Critical to understand the processes by which planets and the like form in the hope of gaining enough insight to extrapolate and apply the ideas to other solar systems. Which, it could be argued, could help us narrow down the serach for life.

Well they probably just didn't have the weight luxury to add in a back-up of some sort. Genesis also went into a death tumble on it's way down so the fact that it spiralled out of control also increased the likelihood of damage on impact. It is a mighty shame. 3 years or work just down the drain so it would seem. I think it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to recover any uncontaminated specimens considering that the craft was split in two on impact. It was a daring plot to try and catch it mid-air to start off with, and as is common in the realms of space travel, setbacks will occur. I think that all is not lost as they would have gained a better understanding of the logistical errors during this mission that will lead to further safeguards in future missions.

 

The Wolverine

For me its not the money. Its the poor souls who have been waiting years, dreaming of the discoverys that could be awaiting them. Hopeing to fill the void of unanswered questions. I realy feel for them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3646154.stm

Apparently they can salvage it after all.

there is still a bit of media trickery here, not all of the data is still useable, only some of it, (just more than expected). most results will be gainable and reliable, but some things will still be unanswered, and it was all blamed on a faulty battery! lol

So basically that whole mid-air catch thing was just a stunt they tried.

since a parachute would have been more than enough to protect the data/material.

No, they say it wouldn't. But they always underestimate the strengths of things, like submarines. Some subs have gone hundreds of feet farther than their crush depth.

 

So they were just playing it safe. You don't spend a bunch of money on an exact replica to see if it breaks, you just have a weight tied to a parachute to test it. So how would they have known?

the parachute was to slow it down so it could be caught by the helicopter, that was how it was supposed to be done, its not often valuable data has come from space --> earth, so they had to think of a way to catch it.

 

guess it was made strong to survive the atmostphere, maybe thats what saved it.

why did they hire a stunt dude...