And Yes, The Gravity Sensors Are Installed Correctly

NASA is expected to announce Wednesday all systems are go for next month's expected return of the Stardust space probe. Scientists are also confident the ending will go much better than the last time the agency tried something like this.

The probe, which flew through the tail of the Wild 2 comet last year to collect samples of its microscopic debris, will come down somewhere in the Utah desert.

"We feel very comfortable that we don't have any errors like the reversed (gravity) sensor for Genesis," said Thomas Duxbury, project manager for NASA's Stardust mission, to the Salt Lake Herald-Tribune.

Duxbury refers to the agency's first effort to bring back samples of comet debris, the Genesis probe -- which impaled itself into the Utah desert at over 200 mph after its parachute (which was only intended to slow the spacecraft enough so that helicopter crews could snag the probe from the air) failed to deploy. The incident (below) was later blamed on gravity sensors that had been installed backwards.

There are several factors that give the agency confidence Stardust -- which is designed to parachute directly to the ground, touching down at about 25 mph -- will fare better.

For starters, the probe's particle collection plates are much sturdier than those in Genesis; the reason such an elaborate landing scenario was needed for the earlier probe was the delicate nature of those panels. And NASA assures everything on Stardust has been checked and rechecked, with a thorough review process undertaken during the mission, with no warning signs at all.

"There were no smoking guns. Everything was designed and implemented and tested correctly," Duxbury said.

Of course, it's likely Genesis gave no clues of its... well, suicidal... intentions to NASA, either. However, scientists can also take heart that scientists were able to salvage much of the material collected from Genesis following its accident.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/news/