Space capsule crashes into Utah desert

7.30am - By GINA KEATING

PASADENA, California - A space capsule carrying solar particles to Earth has crashed in the Utah desert after its parachute failed to open, but scientists say the stardust inside might have been saved.

A silver, disc-shaped capsule containing the stardust collected in a US$264 million ($412.88 million) three-year mission was jettisoned as planned by the Genesis spacecraft.

However, stunned mission scientists fell silent as they watched live aerial pictures of the capsule spinning out of control and crashing into the desert floor.

Three helicopters carrying mission members landed at the Utah crash site to inspect the cracked capsule and determine the best way to retrieve the canister inside it.

"As it came within range of cameras we could tell there was no chute deployment," a Nasa official told reporters at the Genesis mission headquarters in Pasadena.

Two Hollywood helicopter stunt pilots had been on hand to catch the capsule but the failure of the chute meant the capsule was tumbling too fast and too erratically for that part of the mission even to be attempted.

The container inside the capsule had collected solar ions that had been blown by solar winds on wafers of silicon, diamond, sapphire, gold and other materials in what scientists described as a "fossil record" of the Sun.

It was the first extraterrestrial matter to be brought to Earth by a spacecraft since the US Apollo and Soviet Luna missions brought back moon rocks in the 1970s.

Scientists hoped that study of the materials would yield insights about the early formation of planets and the dawn of the solar system.

Mission members said caution was needed in retrieving the crashed capsule and container because of possible dangerous gases inside and unexploded pyrotechnic devices meant to deploy the parachute.

After the initial dismay, scientists were mostly upbeat despite the setback.

"Clearly we may have a lot more cleanup than we would have liked ... but the solar wind ions cannot fall out from being hit hard. I am quite confident there is enough material there to accomplish our science objective," Genesis science team member Kevin McKeegan told reporters.

Scientists had planned to parcel the atoms of oxygen, nitrogen and other elements collected by Genesis to laboratories around the world to enable scientists to learn how the solar system originated and evolved.

The stunt pilots, whose resume included work on action films like Batman and Hulk, were hired after conventional helicopter pilots declined to attempt the controlled mid-air retrieval of the capsule.

Had the mission gone as planned they would have made aviation history by capturing the first man-made object to enter Earth's atmosphere from outer space.

- REUTERS