Starship Asterisk*

Artist Rendering of the Genesis Spacecraft During Collection Phase [i](Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)[/i]

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Concentrator Target Being Disassembled at JSC Prior to Long-Term Nitrogen Storage Post-Return [i](Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JSC)[/i]

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Researchers analyzing samples returned by NASA's 2004 Genesis mission have discovered that our sun and its inner planets may have formed differently than previously thought.

Data revealed differences between the sun and planets in oxygen and nitrogen, which are two of the most abundant elements in our solar system. Although the difference is slight, the implications could help determine how our solar system evolved.

"We found that Earth, the moon, as well as Martian and other meteorites which are samples of asteroids, have a lower concentration of the O-16 than does the sun," said Kevin McKeegan, a Genesis co-investigator from UCLA, and the lead author of one of two Science papers published this week. "The implication is that we did not form out of the same solar nebula materials that created the sun -- just how and why remains to be discovered."

The air on Earth contains three different kinds of oxygen atoms which are differentiated by the number of neutrons they contain. Nearly 100 percent of oxygen atoms in the solar system are composed of O-16, but there are also tiny amounts of more exotic oxygen isotopes called O-17 and O-18. Researchers studying the oxygen of Genesis samples found that the percentage of O-16 in the sun is slightly higher than on Earth or on other terrestrial planets. The other isotopes' percentages were slightly lower.

Another paper detailed differences between the sun and planets in the element nitrogen. Like oxygen, nitrogen has one isotope, N-14, that makes up nearly 100 percent of the atoms in the solar system, but there is also a tiny amount of N-15. Researchers studying the same samples saw that when compared to Earth's atmosphere, nitrogen in the sun and Jupiter has slightly more N-14, but 40 percent less N-15. Both the sun and Jupiter appear to have the same nitrogen composition. As is the case for oxygen, Earth and the rest of the inner solar system are very different in nitrogen.

"These findings show that all solar system objects including the terrestrial planets, meteorites and comets are anomalous compared to the initial composition of the nebula from which the solar system formed," said Bernard Marty, a Genesis co-investigator from Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques and the lead author of the other new Science paper. "Understanding the cause of such a heterogeneity will impact our view on the formation of the solar system."

Data were obtained from analysis of samples Genesis collected from the solar wind, or material ejected from the outer portion of the sun. This material can be thought of as a fossil of our nebula because the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that the outer layer of our sun has not changed measurably for billions of years.

"The sun houses more than 99 percent of the material currently in our solar system, so it's a good idea to get to know it better," said Genesis Principal Investigator Don Burnett of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "While it was more challenging than expected, we have answered some important questions, and like all successful missions, generated plenty more."

Genesis launched in August 2000. The spacecraft traveled to Earth's L1 Lagrange Point about 1 million miles from Earth, where it remained for 886 days between 2001 and 2004, passively collecting solar-wind samples.

On Sept. 8, 2004, the spacecraft released a sample return capsule, which entered Earth's atmosphere. Although the capsule made a hard landing as a result of a failed parachute in the Utah Test and Training Range in Dugway, Utah, it marked NASA's first sample return since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972, and the first material collected beyond the moon. NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston curates the samples and supports analysis and sample allocation.

Genesis mission yields solar isotopic composition despite hard landing

[size=85][i]The Solar Wind Concentrator is a special instrument built by a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory to enhance the flow of solar wind onto a small target to make possible oxygen and nitrogen measurements. Shown here, the target section of the concentrator, which produced essential samples of nitrogen and oxygen.[/i][/size]

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Two papers in this week’s issue of Science report the first oxygen and nitrogen isotopic measurements of the Sun, demonstrating that they are very different from the same elements on Earth. These results were the top two priorities of NASA’s Genesis mission, which was the first spacecraft to return from beyond the Moon, crashing in the Utah desert in 2004 after its parachute failed to deploy during re-entry.

Most of the Genesis payload consisted of fragile solar-wind collectors, which had been exposed to the solar particles over a period of two years. Nearly all of these collectors were decimated during the crash. But the capsule also contained a special instrument built by a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory to enhance the flow of solar wind onto a small target to make possible oxygen and nitrogen measurements. The targets of this Solar Wind Concentrator survived the crash and eventually yielded today’s solar secrets.

"Genesis is the biggest comeback mission since Apollo 13," said Roger Wiens, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and Genesis flight payload lead. "Everyone who saw the crash thought it was a terrible disaster, but instead the project has been fully successful, and the results are absolutely fascinating."

The results provide new clues to how the solar system was formed. Oxygen and nitrogen samples collected from various meteorites, as well as nitrogen sampled in lunar soil and in the Jupiter atmosphere by the Galileo probe, vary significantly from that on Earth by cosmochemical standards: 38 percent for nitrogen and up to 7 percent for oxygen. With the first solar wind samples in hand, showing the early Sun’s composition, scientists can begin the game of determining where Earth’s different O and N came from.

"For nitrogen, Jupiter and the Sun look the same," said Wiens. "It tells us that the original gaseous component of the inner and outer solar system was homogeneous for nitrogen, at least. So where did Earth gets its heavier nitrogen from? Maybe it came here in the material comets are made of. Perhaps it was bonded with organic materials."

For oxygen, the evidence points toward a different astrophysical mechanism called photochemical self-shielding, which the authors believe modified the composition of space dust before it coalesced to form the planets, including Earth. According to the article, the Sun shows an enrichment of pure ¹⁶O relative to Earth instead of differences in ¹⁶O, ¹⁷O, and ¹⁸O that are proportional to their atomic weight or some other mixture that doesn’t show exclusive enrichment of a single isotope. This unique arrangement strongly favors the self-shielding theory, in which solar UV radiation was responsible for uniformly enhancing the two rarer isotopes, ¹⁷O and ¹⁸O, in the terrestrial planets.

And now that some of the particles flowing past Earth from the sun are in hand, "It’s going to make a mission to a comet all the more interesting," Wiens said.

• Science 332(6037) 1509 (24 June 2011) DOI: 10.1126/science.1206965

• Science 332(6037) 1528 (24 June 2011) DOI: 10.1126/science.1204636

• Science 332(6037) 1533 (24 June 2011) DOI: 10.1126/science.1204656

Genesis Mission's Hard Impact

Explanation: A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert in 2004 after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. No space aliens were involved, however. The saucer, pictured above, was the Genesis sample return capsule, part of a human-made robot Genesis spaceship launched in 2001 by NASA itself to study the Sun. The unexpectedly hard landing at over 300 kilometers per hour occurred because the parachutes did not open as planned. The Genesis mission had been orbiting the Sun collecting solar wind particles that are usually deflected away by Earth's magnetic field. Despite the crash landing, many return samples remained in good enough condition to analyze and research is ongoing. So far, discoveries include new details about the composition of the Sun and the effects of the solar wind on unprotected material.

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:You DO know that you will go quite mad arguing with Loco/aristarchusinexile/sputnik.

Unless I drive him mad first. Oh... wait, hmmmm.

neufer wrote:You DO know that you will go quite mad arguing with Loco/aristarchusinexile/sputnik.

Chris Peterson wrote:In the Universe as a whole, there does not need to be a furthest star in the sense you intended, either because the Universe is infinite, or because beyond the "furthest" star you actually start getting closer again.

Loco wrote:We weren't talking about the "observable universe" we were talking about the universe, the physical reality, in which there has to be a farthest star from the centre unless there are multiple farthest stars.

Ah .. but what if they discovered water beyond the furthest star?

Chris Peterson wrote:

Loco wrote:Genesis seems to be the foundation for all other creation myths .. Abram coming from Ur.

That's amusing. There are cultures all over the world that have never been exposed to the Judaic creation myth. Look at some of the native North American cultures and their creation stories.

Chris wrote: In any case, astronomically, there isn't the slightest evidence that there is such a thing as "the furthest star", so the matter is unlikely to be put to that test.

Unless the universe is infinite, which is not likely as even Big Bangers point to a start point .. and if there is a start then there is a finish, and if there is a finish there is a furthest star.

It is as likely that the Universe is infinite as otherwise. At this point, nobody knows. But even a finite Universe does not need a furthest star. In fact, the most common model of the Universe makes such an idea meaningless. The situation is further confounded by the fact that there are certainly stars which are outside the observable universe, so there will naturally be water beyond the farthest stars we might be able to see. When we see outwards, we see backwards. Eventually we see so far back that stars haven't formed yet. But there are other parts of the Universe that we can't see.

Loco wrote:Genesis seems to be the foundation for all other creation myths .. Abram coming from Ur.

Chris wrote: In any case, astronomically, there isn't the slightest evidence that there is such a thing as "the furthest star", so the matter is unlikely to be put to that test.

Unless the universe is infinite, which is not likely as even Big Bangers point to a start point .. and if there is a start then there is a finish, and if there is a finish there is a furthest star.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Loco wrote:Ah .. but what if they discovered water beyond the furthest star? That would prove Genesis Chapter One correct.

If that's your criterion for "proof", why wouldn't it "prove" any number of creation myths? Certainly, there are many where the Universe starts out as water and everything else is created within that.

Chris wrote: In any case, astronomically, there isn't the slightest evidence that there is such a thing as "the furthest star", so the matter is unlikely to be put to that test.

Loco wrote:Ah .. but what if they discovered water beyond the furthest star? That would prove Genesis Chapter One correct.

iamlucky13 wrote:NASA shouldn't comment on religion either way unless they uncover evidence relevant to such commentary. Such an event seems highly unlikely to me, even as a Christian.

timbelina wrote:Why didn't the capsule burn up like a meteorite would have?

Loco wrote:'Genesis'? Instead of promoting knowledge of outer space with athe APOD website, Is NASA's mission secretly the conversion of heathen populations to belief in Judaeo/Christian/Muslim scriptures? I can't say the world doesn't need more genuine belief in the Almighty.

timbelina wrote:Why didn't the capsule burn up like a meteorite would have?

DavidLeodis wrote:I assume the 2000 in March 23-27, 2000 is an error!

• ftp://ftp.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lps ... ull338.pdf
  ftp://ftp.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lps ... ull456.pdf

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/genesis/media/Genesis_findings.html wrote:
Genesis Findings Solve Apollo Lunar Soil Mystery

<<Ever since astronauts returned from another world, scientists have been mystified by some of the moon rocks they brought back. Now one of the mysteries has been solved.

"We learned a great deal about the sun by going to the moon," said Don Burnett, Genesis principal investigator at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "Now, with our Genesis data, we are turning the tables, using the solar wind to better understand lunar processes."

Ansgar Grimberg from ETH Institute of Astronomy in Zurich and coworkers analyzed the composition of neon in a metallic glass exposed on NASA's Genesis mission. The team's findings are reported in a paper published in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Science. Burnett is a co-author of the paper.

One of the stated goals of the Apollo missions was to understand the history of the sun in time. With no atmosphere or magnetic field to interfere, particles from the sun hit and imbedded themselves into the lunar surface for almost four billion years. This goal was not fully met due to the complexity of lunar materials and processes and to the limited duration of the Apollo field operations.

Many of the lunar sample studies were of the relative amounts of the isotopes of different solar gas elements. Many elements have atoms of different mass. For example, neon has a light isotope (Ne20) and a heavy isotope (Ne22).

One of the major surprises from study of the record of neon from the sun in lunar soil samples was evidence for two solar gas components with distinct isotopic compositions. One has been identified as solar wind, the other as higher-energy solar energetic particles because it was found at greater depths in the mineral grains. But the latter has long been puzzling to scientists because its relative amounts were much too large compared with present-day solar fluxes, suggesting very high solar activity in the past.

To investigate this problem, a bulk metallic glass specially synthesized by Charles Hays at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., was exposed to the solar wind for 27 months on NASA's Genesis mission. The advantage of this material is that when it is returned to Earth and analyzed in a laboratory, it can be uniformly etched with nitric acid vapor allowing the depth distribution of the solar wind neon to be measured by stepwise release.

The first experiments at the ETH Institute in Zurich revealed surprising results. Neon isotopic variations were not expected until relatively large depths when the solar energetic particle regime would be reached, but instead they were observed immediately. As etching proceeded, the results were almost identical to those found in many lunar samples, with two major differences.

First, Genesis samples do not contain detectable amounts of neon produced by galactic cosmic ray particles because no appreciable concentrations of such particles accumulated in 27 months. Thus they allowed scientists to analyze pure solar wind samples.

Second, the first gas extractions from the bulk metallic glass showed neon isotopic compositions never seen in lunar sample data. This finding suggests that space weathering and erosion over time reduced the levels of neon on the surface of all lunar samples, which in turn led to a misinterpretation of the lunar data.

The researchers conclude that the Apollo solar energetic particles do not exist. Both the Genesis and Apollo isotopic variations can be quantitatively explained by the fact that the Ne22 isotope is implanted deeper than the Ne20 isotope. Moreover, these findings indicate that there is no evidence for enhanced fluxes of high-energy solar particles billions of years ago compared to today.>>

Loco wrote:

timbelina wrote:Why didn't the capsule burn up like a meteorite would have?

Not all meterorites burn up, some crash land just like the capsule.
The capsule would have been shielded, possibly even have had rockets firing to slow it down.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/genesis/spacecraft/faq-2.html wrote:
<<The sample return capsule, still attached to the main Genesis spacecraft, will be aligned to its proper entry orientation about six hours before entry. At that time it will be spun to 15 revolutions per minute, adding stability for its descent into Earth's atmosphere. The capsule will be released two hours later.>>

timbelina wrote:Why didn't the capsule burn up like a meteorite would have?

apodman wrote:

neufer wrote:Dr. Ruth Adams: ... Neutron ... positive

That makes no more sense than building an interocitor.
I can't recall what MST3K had to say about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interocitor wrote:
Dr. Cal Meecham:
"Complete line of iterociter parts, incorporating greater advances than hitherto known in the field of electronics."
What exactly is an iterociter?

<<In the film _This Island Earth_, advanced physicist Cal Meacham first becomes aware of an interocitor when a book arrives at his lab entitled, Electronic Service, Unit #16. Inside is contained a bill of materials for the interocitor, describing it as, "incorporating greater advances than hitherto known in the field of electronics". From the specifications, Meacham opines, "There's no limit to what it could do. Laying a four lane highway at the rate of a mile a minute would be a cinch."

Of the 2486 components comprising an interocitor, only three are named:

* Bead condenser (model #: AB-619)
* Cathermin tube with inindium complex of +4
* Intensifier disk

The instructions accompanying the components also caution that no interocitor part can be replaced, and to bear this in mind while assembling.

Once assembled and powered, Meacham places the intensifier disk into the right-hand control and rotates it 18 degrees counter-clockwise. Upon doing so, the telecommunication function of the interocitor is activated, and Meacham establishes contact with Exeter, the party responsible for sending him the device.

During their conversation, Meacham's lab assistant, Joe Wilson attempts to photograph the device, but is informed by Exeter that "Your camera will pick up nothing but black fog. Images on the interocitor don't register on film."

Later, Meacham boards a light aircraft autopiloted by an interocitor to join Exeter at his research facility. Exeter is also seen using an interocitor to remotely surveil a private conversation between Meacham and two other scientists at the facility, Ruth Adams and Steve Carlson. Later, Exeter's assistant, Brack, uses the weapons capability of the device to thwart the attempted escape of Meacham, Adams, and Carlson from the facility.>>

neufer wrote:Dr. Ruth Adams: ... Neutron ... positive