Air Force team helps with Genesis return mission

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Matthew Dillier
  • 95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFPN) --  NASA scientists onboard a specially modified aircraft from here collected data as the world watched the unmanned Genesis spacecraft return to Earth Sept. 8. During the reentry, however, its parachute failed to deploy and Genesis crashed into a Utah desert.

Although damage to the spacecraft and the samples it collected is still being evaluated, there were many benefits from the project beyond the samples it was sent to collect, said Paul Wercinski, NASA Ames Genesis observation campaign manager.

“We’ll get a better understanding of the heat environment that surrounds return vehicles at these speeds, and as a result, we can design better heat shields,” he said. “We’ll also be able to compare our models of what we think should happen and what actually happened.”

Based here, the specially modified NKC-135 Stratotanker is called the Flying Infrared Signature Technology Aircraft. On this mission, it carried scientists from the NASA and other organizations to an altitude of 39,000 feet -- within viewing distance of the spacecraft’s re-entry.

While the scientists onboard the aircraft are still evaluating their data, they said they were enthusiastic about the observation mission.

“We were able to see it with our eyes, and the instruments were able to capture the data we were looking for,” Mr. Wercinski said. “It was exciting because some of our hand-held cameras took pictures of the craft.”

Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, said being airborne for the observation was the ideal environment as opposed to viewing the re-entry from the ground.

“(It) was the perfect aircraft for this mission. We had a dark sky to observe against, and the object was real bright,” he said. “We captured the image in our cameras and were able to get photometry measurements to see how bright it was.”

Although the aircraft is already equipped with special sensors and other observation equipment, maintainers here modified the aircraft for the mission. They added “eyeball” and optical windows to take photographs of the return capsule, said Don Bustillos, of the 412th Test Wing projects office and Edwards project manager for the observation.

It took about five days to modify the aircraft, he said. The modification team put in new windows to make sure the aircraft was pressurized and put in power units and antenna systems for Global Positioning System units, making sure all the equipment was properly stored.

There were a few obstacles that were overcome to make this event possible, Mr. Wercinski said.

“We had about a month’s notice to get everything together,” he said. “It’s a very precise process because the return vehicle returns at a precise time, and there are no second chances.”

The Genesis return craft trajectory was slightly different than scientists originally calculated.

“The tracking was a little difficult because the craft came in a little higher than expected, but we were able to get the data we wanted,” Mr. Jenniskens said.

The Genesis spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in August 2001 and spent the past two years collecting solar wind samples from the Lagrange 1 point between the sun and Earth.