Team hopes Stardust will have safe landing

By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Brownlee's Stardust spacecraft, the culmination of nearly three decades of work, is scheduled to hurtle back to Earth on Jan. 15, 2006, carrying dust from a comet — and relying on the same type of parachute system that failed so spectacularly on Genesis.

"Parachutes are one of the simplest things on the whole spacecraft," he said. "Usually, they're extremely reliable, but these things are made by people and they will never be 100 percent foolproof."

The Genesis science team will try to figure out what went wrong, but even if they discover a basic design or mechanical flaw, there's nothing Brownlee and his colleagues can do to fix the parachutes on Stardust, which was launched in 1999.

"Our parachute has been stuck in this little container for almost six years," he said. "All we can do is wait and see."

Stardust and Genesis are sister missions, representing the first time in more than 30 years that NASA has attempted to bring samples from space down to Earth. Both were designed and built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado.

But Stardust, which was approved first, is more rugged than Genesis.

"Even if Stardust did crash land like that, I fully expect we would be able to recover some fraction of the science," said Brownlee, who is principal investigator for the mission.

That is, unless it lands in a very unlucky spot.

"Worst-case scenario, it would come down without a parachute, hit a rock and then get blown by the wind for 50 miles," he said, with a nervous chuckle. "There are lots of worst cases to imagine."

The more-delicate Genesis capsule was designed to be stabilized and slowed by two parachutes, then plucked out of the air by a stunt helicopter, to spare fragile components the jolt of impact.
 
The military used to employ a similar technique to snag canisters of film ejected from satellites, and Brownlee and his team considered using it for Stardust. "We thought it was too risky, because no one has done it in many years."

Stardust already has survived several harrowing milestones, from launch to its rendezvous with Comet Wild 2 in January 2003. The spacecraft passed within 150 miles of the comet, grabbing dust particles and snapping close-up pictures.