What is Genesis

A.� A NASA space probe launched this month from Cape Canaveral on a mission to collect particles from the Sun.

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Q.� How will Genesis collect Sun particles

A.� Since the Earth’s atmosphere acts as a buffer to solar wind Genesis will need to get 1.5 million kilometres away from it to be able to collect the winds. Once at a suitable distance the probe will collect around 20 micrograms, equal to a few grains of salt, of solar wind using bicycle wheel sized collecting trays made from high purity materials into which ions from the solar winds will become implanted.

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When two years are up, the trays will be retracted and stored for safe keeping.

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Q.� When will Genesis return to Earth

A.� The scheduled date is not until September 2004 although there has already been a delay in the timing of the probe’s take off which happened 9 days later than planned.

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To prevent the samples being damaged by the sudden impact of touch down they will be caught by a helicopter in mid air as the capsule containing them parachutes through the Earth’s atmosphere.

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Q.� What will the Genesis mission tell us

A.� The mission has been dubbed the Rosetta stone of planetary science because it will hopefully provide researchers with a key to understanding such mysteries as what happened when our Solar System was born and what our Sun and its planets are made up of.

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Q.� How can particles collected now tell us about events 4.6 billion years ago

A.� Scientists’ suspect that traces of the huge cloud of gas and dust, the solar nebula, that gave rise to our Sun and its planets will still be present in the solar winds. The Sun’s internal nuclear reactions will have modified its core but the surface layers don’t mix with this core and so should have preserved the original nebular composition.

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Q.� But if our solar system was created from the same cloud then aren’t all the planets made from the same stuff

A.� No, although our Solar System formed at the same time from the same basic materials scientists know that the planets and the Sun are not made up of the same material. Rather the planets, moons, and even asteroids differ in the amounts of the various chemical elements from which they were made.

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Do you want to know how a space mission works Click here to ask.

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by Lisa Cardy