After orbiting the sun for over three years in order to gather clues to the origin of the solar system, NASA's Genesis space capsule crashed to Earth after a parachute malfunction. A parachute was supposed to deploy from the refrigerator-sized capsule, while helicopters operated by Hollywood stunt pilots would hook the parachute and float the capsule to the ground.

The parachute never deployed, sending the centerpiece of three years and $260 million worth of work hurtling toward the Earth. The capsule crashed in the western Utah desert at the Dugway Proving Ground.
The capsule held billions of highly charged atoms collected from the solar wind on fragile discs. Scientists had hoped to study the particles for the next five years to gain an idea as to how the sun and surrounding planets in the solar system had formed. There is serious doubt as to whether the samples survived the crash.

Officials at NASA believed that there was a very good chance that the disks would shatter even if the unit had touched the ground aided by parachutes as planned. NASA rescue teams are being held at bay by the fear of an explosion at the site, due to the parachute that could deploy at any point. The Genesis mission was launched in 2001 and marked the first time that samples would be collected and returned to Earth from points farther than the moon.

Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory said that the five disks holding the sample particles were of different thickness, which may help scientists sort through the rubble and save some of the samples that have been acquired over the past three years.

NASA will attempt another such capsule recovery in 2006, when the Stardust probe returns to Earth. Stardust's mission was to collect dust samples from the trail of a comet.

This article was co-written with John Frega