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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Genesis capsule crashes

Associated Press

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah – The Genesis space capsule, which had orbited the sun for three years gathering potential clues to the origin of the solar system, crashed to Earth and cracked open Wednesday, exposing its collection of solar atoms to contamination.

Flight engineers suspect a set of tiny explosives failed to trigger the capsule’s parachutes, and the capsule slammed into the Utah desert at 193 mph.

A recovery team that includes Genesis project members was dispatched to the crash site Wednesday afternoon on a salvage mission.

Scientists were hopeful they could salvage the broken disks that held billions of charged atoms collected from the solar wind, and perhaps still unravel clues about the origin and evolution of our solar system.

“This is actually not the worst-case scenario,” said Andrew Dantzler, director of NASA’s solar system division, noting the capsule embedded itself in soft desert soil and avoided hitting anything harder that would have made it a “total loss.”