Source: BBC News Online | Sci/Tech
Date: Sept 7 1998
Header: Grabbing a piece of the sun

Scientists have just completed the first design of a space mission
designed to grab a piece of the sun. Our science editor Dr David
Whitehouse reports. 

When it is launched in 2001 the Genesis mission will fly into space
and unfurl a series of detectors that will capture some of the solar
wind. 

The solar wind is a stream of particles the sun throws off into
space. Because the sun comprises more than 99% of the mass of our
solar system analysing the wind will tell us what most of our
universe is made of. 

A smaller scale version of the experiment was conducted on the lunar
surface during the Apollo moon landings. 


Our solar system was born out of a vast cloud of gas and dust. To
understand this process better scientists want to know exactly what
this cloud was made of. To do that they want to capture a piece of
the solar wind and bring it back to Earth for analysis. 

The Genesis mission will give them solar wind composition at the
precision required to test these theories. 

It will be a spinning spacecraft positioned in a so-called halo orbit
closer to the sun than the earth. 

It will be exposed to the solar wind for two years. Samples of the
solar wind will be stored into a contamination-tight canister which
will be returned to Earth for mid-air recovery in Utah. 

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