http://www.genesismission.org/mission/statusupdate.html

Genesis Mission Status Update
August 28, 2002

Genesis continues to collect solar particles. During an energetic particle event on Aug. 24, more bright objects than normal were identified in the star tracker, with no ill effect.

On Aug. 28, the flight team identified a problem with a memory chip in one of the spacecraft's memory modules. Initial indications are that the chip, which is an electronically erasable programmable read-only memory, has one corrupt bit. The team dealt successfully with a similar situation about seven months ago, when a corrupt bit was identified in a chip in a different memory module and a software patch was transmitted to the spacecraft to bypass the bad bit. Engineers are in the process of determining the exact location of the newly detected corruption.

A solar wind shock this week provided the opportunity for successfully using a software patch that was previously installed for autonomous recovery of the solar wind concentrator's rejection grid when voltage climbs too high. The rejection grid of fine wires carries a positive charge to deflect hydrogen ions in the solar wind, so that the solar wind sample being collected will have a relatively high proportion of the more scientifically interesting oxygen ions. The shock reached the spacecraft on Aug. 18, and the rejection grid's voltage quickly rose from about 1,000 volts to about 2,000 volts. When a fault occurred at about 2,025 volts, the software patch successfully went to work. The rejection grid was autonomously brought down to 1,400 volts, paused for 1 hour, and then ramped up again, ending at about 1,950 volts.

Another highlight of the week was approval of an improvement in the flight software for the sample return capsule's avionics unit.