$264 Million Thud Caused By Upside-Down Switch

First, the software was programmed in meters instead of feet on the Mars Climate Orbiter. Now, the same contractor appears to have installed a gravity switch backwards, causing a quarter billion dollar spacecraft to make one heck of a hole in the sand.

In what could well be a major blow to NASA and major contractor Lockheed Martin, NASA investigators have determined the most likely cause of why the Genesis spacecraft made a hole in a desert in Utah instead of gently floating to a helicopter rescue in the sky. It appears that a gravity switch that should have triggered the two parachutes on the spacecraft was installed backwards, and the Moon's gravitational field was just not quite strong enough to trigger the opening.

The gravity switch was supposed to monitor the spacecraft's deceleration as it entered the planet's atmosphere. At a predetermined point, it was to have sent a signal to a timer, which would have deployed a drogue chute. This first chute would have slowed Genesis to a speed that would allow the safe deployment of the second, larger parachute, which would have slowed down the capsule to some 10 mph. At that speed, specially trained helicopter crews would have snatched it with specially designed hooks in what was to be a spectacular mid-air recovery.

Michael G. Ryschkewitsch, chairman of the Genesis Mishap Investigation Board, said that since the switch was not installed correctly, it could not have possibly worked properly. "The board is working to confirm this proximate cause to determine why this error happened, why it was not caught by the test program and an extensive system of in-process and after-the-fact reviews of the Genesis system," Ryschkewitsch said.

The Genesis spacecraft's mission was to collect samples of solar wind from our Sun. Scientists were planning to study the material captured on delicate wafers made of various materials in an attempt to get a better idea of how the solar system first formed. The retrieval using helicopters and hooks was planned that way to avoid contamination of the samples. Instead, Genesis buried itself into sand at almost 200 mph.

So far, scientists have managed to recover a portion of the samples carried in the interior of the spacecraft, and are working to recover them by cleaning the materials recovered from the spacecraft. Investigators continue to search for other malfunctions or manufacturing errors on Genesis that may have contributed to the crash.

FMI: http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov