by Roger Wiens
Although we were disappointed, we managed to get some much-needed rest. Before long it was time for the launch readiness review, a mandatory meeting for all spacecraft teams held one month before launch. It was my first time ever in Florida. After arriving in Orlando and driving down the long, straight Beachline Expressway to the coast, I explored Cocoa Beach. Astronaut lore abounded in this small town and I ate it up. Many of the restaurants and gift shops displayed photos of the launches and of the astronauts themselves; most of the photos were autographed by the ones they pictured. Some places had short descriptions of the space adventurers and their habits. The combination of astronaut memorabilia, surfboards, and beachwear made for an interesting mix of decor. As I thought about the people who had launched from this point into space, I reminded myself that our vehicle was going on a historic mission, too—the first spacecraft to go past the Moon and back.
The next morning I drove into the complex for the review; I was looking for the administrative buildings, which are well away from the launchpads. However, somewhere along the way I took a wrong turn. The Cape is a big place, and as I zipped along counting the launchpads looming in the distance, I briefly lost track of all else. I was beginning to wonder where I was when I rounded a corner, and there in front of me was a huge launchpad. There sat the space shuttle, with its gleaming external fuel tank and solid boosters. Now I knew I was in the wrong place! I turned around on the deserted road, noting an official-looking military vehicle parked at a checkpoint just ahead. I eventually got to the review and took a seat near the back. The rest of the trip was uneventful.
Now, a month later, a tropical storm began churning up through the Gulf of Mexico as we waited out the first delay—the additional radiation test I had learned about just before my interview. The disturbance was forecast to hit Cape Canaveral late on the new launch date, and the cloud cover was predicted to be too thick for range safety by the scheduled liftoff time. NASA decided to fuel up the Delta II rocket anyway in hopes that Genesis could beat out the storm. We could not move the launch time forward, as a one-minute interval near noon was the only time each day that the Earth was in the proper orientation for liftoff. However, we hoped the clouds might be delayed just enough to get Genesis off the ground.
The long-term countdown began late Tuesday evening and continued through the night. As it proceeded, fueling and other preparations were carried out. In the morning the VIP visitors, including my family and me, were bused to a viewing site 2 miles from the rocket. Our group consisted of everyone who had worked on the project, from the rocket engineers to the navigators, the managers, and those of us who had built the payload. It was a grand reunion. Even our enthusiastic contact person at the silicon-wafer company—which supplied the solar-wind collectors—was there. Other spectators lined the causeways and public parks slightly farther away. The excitement was mounting. From the bleachers, the thin, tall rocket could be seen way off in the distance through the Florida haze, a stream of white vapor emanating from the main-stage liquid oxygen exhaust vent. A helicopter flew by overhead.
The countdown continued to under an hour. High clouds began giving way to thicker, lower clouds. The clock proceeded to forty-five minutes, then thirty. The humid air started feeling heavy. The VIP loudspeaker announced that the cloud cover had indeed become too thick. The countdown carried on for ten more minutes in case there was a break in the clouds, but it was then terminated. A disappointed groan went up from the crowd. Slowly we gathered our belongings and filed back onto the bus.
The tropical storm kept the launch from being rescheduled for the next several days. One more attempt was scrubbed at the tail end of the storm because of high winds. Our family used the time in Florida for a rainy trip to Disney World, and then we reluctantly returned home.
Fortunately, the launch period lasted for nearly two weeks. After the storm passed, Genesis was cleared to go following the departure of a military satellite with higher priority. Finally, on August 8, under a clear blue sky, the rocket was readied once again. This time I watched a TV monitor with the rest of our Genesis team at Los Alamos. The countdown proceeded flawlessly. At one minute to launch, the main valves on the oxygen exhaust ports were closed, allowing the pressure to build up. The rocket now belched a cloud of steam every few seconds from the pressure-relief valves, appearing like a huge slender dragon ready for action. As the countdown proceeded to zero, the solid boosters surrounding the main stage were lit and the rocket rose skyward, clearing the tower. Everything was going well as the seconds and then the first minutes passed. The vehicle disappeared from sight, and the monitors switched to the video camera looking down the side of the rocket. After dropping the first and second stages, the rocket coasted around the back side of Earth and then relit its third stage, sending it speeding away in the direction of the Sun. Finally, the third stage was jettisoned, the solar arrays unfolded, and telemetry began beaming back to Earth, describing a completely successful launch.
Genesis was off on its round-trip voyage.
A month after launch:
“We have a ‘go’ from the mission manager for opening the capsule.”
“We also have a ‘go’ from the payload manager.”
“The command will be radiated to the spacecraft on the countdown from three. Three . . . two . . . one . . . mark!” We were listening intently over the phone lines to the chatter between JPL and the spacecraft operations in Denver, watching our synchronized computer screens to wait for confirmation of the capsule opening, signifying the next stage of our mission. On the screen full of numbers and acronyms, two indicators suddenly became highlighted in red to indicate the change.
“We have confirmation that the capsule is open.” We all cheered. In my mind I saw the spacecraft spinning like a ballerina in slow motion far out in space—a scene straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As the lid of the capsule opened, the spinning would slow down and begin to wobble. If all went according to plan, the wobble would be damped out over the next twenty-four hours, leaving the spacecraft spinning smoothly again.
The mission plan called for opening the capsule lid—the clamshell—a month after launch while the spacecraft was still en route to its semistable point a million miles toward the Sun. We would wait to expose the solar-wind panels inside their canister until after the last big spacecraft maneuver a couple months later to avoid any possibility of contamination from fuel.
Two days later I got a call from Don Burnett, who sounded nervous. “The capsule is overheating. This could be really bad,” he said. Genesis was the first large capsule NASA had built for Earth reentry since the Apollo days. It presented a special thermal challenge because the back of the capsule was coated with thick layers of rubbery carbon polymer to help it survive reentry, while the front of the capsule, which faced the Sun, was metallic. The ablative material insulated the back of the capsule—too well—while the front heated up like a car hood on a hot summer day. Our solution to this temperature problem had been to use a special white paint around the parts of the sunlit side that were not covered with solar-wind collectors as well as on the side of the sample canister that was now exposed. As we found out over the next several weeks, the white paint was not doing its job—not by a long shot.
After some consultation, we decided to reclose the capsule almost all the way. We would have a couple of months to decide what to do. The most temperature-sensitive component appeared to be a battery that was responsible for deploying the parachute when the capsule came back to Earth. According to the engineers, the thermal limit for this battery was supposedly just above room temperature. The capsule had already shot up to that temperature and would easily surpass it in a few days if we opened it back up.
No one was happy. The spacecraft could go on its merry way as long as the capsule was closed, but we would never collect our samples of the Sun. Or we could collect our samples, but without a good battery to deploy the parachute we could never hope to get the capsule back to the ground in one
piece.
The engineers did some research into the battery. They determined that they had never been tested at warmer temperatures. They also found that Sandia National Laboratories had a large stock of these batteries, and they quickly bought them all, along with a stash of beer coolers. They set up a room as “battery central,” where they put several batteries in each cooler. They outfitted the thermos boxes with heaters and temperature controllers so they could use them as low-temperature ovens. Batteries were “cooked” at different temperatures for varying periods of days, weeks, and eventually months. Within a couple of months the engineers discovered that the batteries could in fact survive to much higher temperatures than had been previously thought, nearly to the boiling point of water, over long periods of time. With this information coming in, we were able to start our sample collection as scheduled a few months later. Thanks to the engineers’ last-minute tests, our mission was saved.
On April 2, 2004, after twenty-seven months of collection, we closed the Genesis capsule. The latch was successfully secured—an important criterion for coming home safely. The spacecraft’s thrusters then gave a short burn to head the spacecraft home. Over the course of its journey, the Genesis spacecraft had traveled around the Sun more than two times, always staying along an imaginary line between the Earth and the Sun. At several points during solar-wind collection, the engineers had warned that we were pushing the limits of the battery. But our team of scientists, led by Don Burnett, had argued successfully that we were willing to take our chances. The temperature of the parachute battery had eventually risen to just a few degrees shy of the point where we believed it would start to seriously degrade. However, with the capsule now closed and no bare metal exposed to the Sun, the insides of the capsule started to cool. We relaxed. The Genesis mission looked like it would be a success after all—at least we had no reason to suspect otherwise.
chapter
six
IMPACT
SEPTEMBER 7, 2004. THE MAIN HANGAR AT MICHAEL ARMY Airfield near Dugway, Utah, was bustling with activity. Outside, television trucks were set up, generators running. The interior was divided into two areas. On the side facing the runway, two gleaming helicopters stood near the large door. Along one wall were neatly taped maps and charts. In the other half of the hangar, rows of chairs faced a stage with a large screen, a podium, and a panelists’ table facing the room. At the back of this area a small room held tables with telephones. Representatives of the media were starting to arrive in preparation for the big event the next day.
NASA had scored a public-relations hit. The Genesis mission plans called for the reentry capsule, containing the fragile silicon-wafer chips used for solar-wind collection, to be captured in midair to prevent any breakage of its contents. The military had used midair capture for years in its classified programs, but the idea was thrillingly new to the civilian space program and to the public.
The idea of hooking the Genesis capsule in midair over Dugway Proving Ground had been hatched as early as 1994. The spacecraft team wanted the capsule to come in over land. We were afraid that if it dropped into the ocean, salt water would contaminate the solar samples—or worse, the capsule would sink. The Dugway location was a natural choice for several reasons. First, it was the largest restricted airspace in the continental United States. This was important because the area over which a space capsule might land was sizable. The exact landing point depended on several things: final maneuvers, the entry angle, and the upper atmospheric winds. For Genesis, the area into which the capsule might descend, considering these uncertainties, was about 15 by 30 miles. This ellipse could fit well within Dugway and the surrounding restricted airspace.
Second, the area was in government hands, with no houses or people to injure if the capsule hit the ground. The terrain was largely flat: in fact, it was the salt flats. Finally, the proving grounds were set up to track incoming objects like no place else on Earth. The main area, called the Utah Test and Training Range, had over fifty radar and optical tracking stations, which were used in testing cruise missiles. A NASA capsule would be a cinch to find long before it got near the ground.
The plan was this: following military applications, the capsule was fitted with a parafoil—the rectangular chute used in most wind sports—instead of a round parachute. Once the helicopter pilot received the GPS position of the descending capsule and visually sighted it, he would maneuver behind it. The chopper would then overtake the parafoil, snag it with a hook on the end of a pole, and return the capsule to the airfield, where it would be brought to a cleanroom for inspection and disassembly.
The Genesis project secured preliminary permission for the landing during the proposal phase. The team chose to use civilian pilots for the helicopter retrieval, since military pilots might be subject to the call of duty. NASA contracted with Vertigo, a private flight company, to find the best commercial chopper pilots available. Over the course of multiple queries they were repeatedly referred to Hollywood stunt pilots. And so it was that Cliff Fleming and Dan Rudert were hired for the job of retrieving the Genesis capsule. Headlines like “NASA Hires Hollywood Stunt Pilots to Retrieve Capsule” began to appear in the months and weeks prior to the reentry. A press conference held in August featured only one of the pilots, as the other pilot was busy filming Batman Begins over the streets of Chicago. For the media and the public, the Genesis capsule recovery was seen as an extraordinary event in a most unusual place.
Dugway Proving Ground had a surreal, out-of-the-way feeling to it. From Salt Lake City you had to drive for nearly an hour past eerie formations and white flooded ditches on the edge of the Great Salt Lake before turning south down Skull Valley, passing only three lonely farmhouses over the next forty minutes. Once inside Dugway, the road crossed two more broad valleys and several checkpoints before descending to the Michael Army Airfield, seemingly the most desolate place in North America. Because of the sparseness of the vegetation, the airstrip could hardly be distinguished from the surrounding desert.
On the morning of September 8, the hangar was packed with people by the time the Sun rose on a cloudless sky. Out in space, the final event—the release of the capsule from the mother ship—had occurred flawlessly a couple of hours earlier, and the capsule was now flying alone, picking up speed as it hurtled toward the Earth. Just before it arrived at the outer reaches of the atmosphere, it was traveling at nearly 40,000 kilometers per hour (25,000 mph).
The navigators had defined a region in the sky they called “the Keyhole” through which the spacecraft had to enter in order to land within the allowed zone. If Genesis was not heading toward the Keyhole after the last maneuver, the entry would have to be aborted, and the spacecraft diverted into a trajectory that would bring it back for another attempt some weeks later. If Genesis came through the Keyhole, there remained one last tricky procedure before entry: turning the spacecraft around so that the heat shield was pointed toward Earth, spinning the craft up like a top, and then releasing the capsule. The rest of the craft was then boosted back into deep space, avoiding Earth.
The capsule was held to the mother ship in four places: three structural attachments and a heavy electronics cable that was used to send commands to and from the capsule during most of the flight. Explosive bolts were fired to separate each of these attachment points. If any one of these failed, the mother ship and capsule would enter the atmosphere dangling precariously together—for an outcome only God would know.
Fortunately, Genesis maneuvered beautifully and appeared headed toward a picture-perfect landing smack in the middle of the Dugway grounds. In the hangar, NASA dignitaries, spouses and family members of the team, and a large number of reporters and camera crews awaited the main event. As the rotors of first one and then the other helicopter came to life, the crowd surged out onto the tarmac to watch the departure. The choppers took off to exuberant cheers. From the airfield, the helicopters had to fly almost 30 miles to where they would loiter just outside of the expected rec
overy zone. Once Genesis’s parachute was deployed and the exact position was known, they would receive the go-ahead to move in.
But it was not to be.
Having no major role in the entry, I had been assigned to the VIP and press hangar. The NASA media relations officer had told me that, assuming all went well, I wouldn’t have to do anything except be available for interviews. I failed to ask what to do if all didn’t go well. As the helicopters arrived at the waiting area where they would hover until the capsule appeared, I took a seat in the front row along with scores of reporters and VIPs watching the event on a big screen.
After what seemed an eternity of pictures showing the helicopters in flight, the scene suddenly switched to the long-range tracking cameras, showing a white dot, barely discernible against the clear blue sky. The crowd cheered excitedly. Genesis, which had left Earth three years and one month earlier, was once again within sight, the first object ever to return from beyond the Moon.
I wonder whether my childhood model rocketry hobby prepared me for what took place that day. The model rockets we had flown as boys were far from perfect. Many a time, rockets we had worked on long and hard came plummeting to the ground because of a parachute malfunction. Most of the time, the resulting collision with the Earth did not cause catastrophic destruction, but resulted in a broken fin or two, some dirt, and a crumple mark here or there. Other times, when the parachute did open, the rocket would drift in the wrong direction, either into our small town or over a clump of trees. I bear a scar on my ribs from a time I tried to climb a rocket-eating tree. Given these experiences, my view of parachute recovery was that it was controlled chaos at best. You had to be ready for anything—that was part of the excitement.