MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE<br />JET PROPULSION LABORATORY<br />CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY<br />NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION<br />PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011<br />http://www.jpl.nasa.gov<br /><br />GENESIS MISSION STATUS<br />May 23, 2002<br /><br />NASA's Genesis spacecraft, on a mission to collect particles <br />of the solar wind, successfully conducted its first flight <br />path maneuver yesterday after completing its first loop <br />around a gravitational point between the Sun and Earth.<br /> <br />Genesis is orbiting a Lagrange point, designated L1, about <br />1.5 million kilometers (just under 1 million miles) away from <br />Earth toward the Sun, where gravitational and centrifugal <br />forces acting on the spacecraft are balanced. The L1 point is <br />a convenient place to position spacecraft because it allows an <br />uninterrupted view of the Sun, is outside the Earth's <br />magnetosphere and requires few spacecraft maneuvers to stay in <br />orbit. <br /><br />"Genesis crossed the finish line of its first loop and moved <br />smoothly into its second loop yesterday," said Genesis mission <br />manager Don Sweetnam, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, <br />Pasadena, Calif.<br /><br />Last month, a strong solar storm passed over Genesis. <br />High-energy protons several times more abundant than usual <br />bombarded the spacecraft. Proton storms can cause outages <br />in the delicate electronics of a spacecraft or satellite. But <br />Genesis' onboard software helped the spacecraft weather the <br />proton storm well.<br /><br />During the solar storm, the star tracker, which orients the <br />spacecraft by centering on stars, was briefly blinded. The <br />attitude control software handled the situation as intended, <br />so that overall spacecraft performance was unaffected and all <br />daily tasks were completed as scheduled.<br /><br />Genesis is collecting samples of the solar wind, invisible <br />charged particles that flow outward from the Sun. This <br />treasured smidgen of the Sun will be returned to Earth in <br />2004 and preserved in a special laboratory for study by <br />scientists in search of answers to fundamental questions <br />about the composition and development of our solar system.<br /><br />Genesis occupies what scientists call a "halo" orbit around <br />L1, meaning that its orbit, when viewed from Earth, would look <br />like a large oval around the Sun. Genesis went into the halo <br />orbit on November 16, 2001.<br /><br />JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in <br />Pasadena, manages the Genesis mission for NASA's Office of <br />Space Science, Washington, D.C. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, <br />Denver, Colo., designed and built the spacecraft and operates it <br />jointly with JPL. Major portions of the payload design and <br />fabrication were carried out at JPL, the Los Alamos National <br />Laboratory in New Mexico and at NASA's Johnson Space Center, <br />Houston, Texas.<br /><br />More information on the Genesis mission is available at: <br /><br />http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov .<br /><br />####