Statistics

• Days of spaceflight: 1127
• Days of Solar Wind Collection: 884
• Total distance traveled from launch to Earth return: ~32 million kilometers (20 million miles)
  Relative to the Sun, Genesis traveled ~1.8 billion miles, essentially the motion of the Earth about the Sun for 1127 days
• Sample material collected: ~10²⁰ Ions, ~0.4 milligrams

Not since the days of Apollo have NASA navigators performed course plotting designed to bring a spacecraft from beyond Earth's orbit to a predestined landing zone on Earth. To do so, the Genesis navigation team calls upon the giant dishes of NASA's Deep Space Network to provide data on the Genesis trajectory. Navigators analyze the spacecraft's radio signal using techniques called radiometric and Doppler tracking to help pinpoint its distance from Earth as an aid to navigation.

Throughout the Genesis mission, tracking and telecommunications have been provided by NASA's Deep Space Network complexes in California, Australia and Spain. The data rate from the spacecraft ranges from 1 to 47 kilobits per second. The Deep Space Network receives most data from the spacecraft through 34-meter-diameter (110-foot) antennas, but 26-meter (85-foot) antennas have also occasionally been used.

70-meter (230 ft) at Goldstone Complex, California		View of the Canberra Complex, Australia showing the 70-meter (230 ft) antenna and the 34-meter (11 ft) antennas		Overview of the entire Madrid Antenna Complex, Madrid, Spain

  Utah Test and Training Range

	Members of the Recovery Team watch as OSCAR and Vertigo Helicopters leave hanger to intercept capsule

The Utah Test & Training Range provides the largest overland contiguous block of restricted airspace in the continental United States authorized for supersonic flight, available for aircrew training and weapons testing. The airspace, situated over 6,796 square kilometers (2,624 square miles), is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Air Force. The remainder is managed by the U.S. Army at Dugway Proving Ground. Airspace boundaries do not necessarily coincide with the boundaries of the Defense Department land beneath the airspace.

Operated and maintained by the 388th Range Squadron based out of Hill Air Force Base some 50 miles to the east, the Utah Test & Training Range supports training numerous branches of the armed services and their allies with capabilities for air-to ground, air-to-air and ground force exercises. More than 22,000 training sorties and more than 1,000 test sorties are flown out on the range annually. It is used for testing munitions and propellants up to the most powerful ICBM rocket motors and non-nuclear explosive components.

Monument purchased and designed by Genesis team members to commemorate the return to Earth View from space of the Utah Test and Training Range post return

The Air Force range is supporting Genesis by providing range imagery and targeting guidance. The range's mission control center — located at Hill Air Force Base — will radio information to the helicopter crews. An Air Force building at the Army's Michael Army Air Field will be home to the clean room erected to temporarily house the Genesis capsule after it is captured.

The U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground serves as the nation's chemical and biological defense proving ground. It is a large, remote, high-desert closed post that employs about 1,200 military, government civilians and support contractors. The mission of Dugway Proving Ground is to test U.S. and allied biological and chemical defense systems; perform nuclear-biological-chemical survivable testing of defense material; provide support to chemical and biological weapons conventions; and operate and maintain an installation to support test missions.

Dugway is supporting Genesis by providing facilities, logistical, weather and range expertise as well as security and support personnel. The majority of the events surrounding the Genesis capture and return will occur at the facility's Ditto Test Area which approximately 19 kilometers (12 miles) from the installations main gate. Located in Ditto is the Michael Army Air Field, where the Genesis recovery helicopters will be based. Dugway is located approximately 130 kilometers (about 80 miles) west-southwest of Salt Lake City, in the Great Salt Lake Desert in Tooele County, Utah. The Dugway Proving Ground covers 3,233 square kilometers (1,248 square miles) — larger than the state of Rhode Island. Surrounded on three sides by mountain ranges, the proving ground's terrain includes mountains, valleys and a large, flat, sparsely vegetated area that extends westward into the southern reaches of expansive salt flats of the Great Salt Lake Desert.

  Mission Factsheets

Fact sheets are short informative texts with graphics or photos that provide specific information without the expectation of action on the part of the reader. They are available on a variety of topics from Genesis mission outreach. Each individual fact sheet deals with a narrow topic. These are further organized as sets about the Genesis mission, about the Genesis spacecraft, and about different disciplines in science.

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is used to distribute fully formatted, print-quality documents electronically. The following information is available to view and print as a PDF file with Adobe's Acrobat reader.

NEW MISSION FACT SHEET!   Print Quality: High Resolution Search for Origins: Front, 300 d.p.i. (2 MB) Search for Origins: Back, 300 d.p.i. (2 MB)   Print Quality: Low Resolution Search for Origins: Front, 72 d.p.i. (260 k) Search for Origins: Back, 72 d.p.i. (260 k)   The Genesis Mission: An Overview Partners in the NASA Genesis Mission How Does Studying the Solar Wind Tell Us About the Origin of Planets?		Black Holes Dwarf Stars Giant Stars Globular Clusters Interstellar Clouds Life Cycle of Stars, The Neutron Stars Orbits Protostars Pulsars Quasars Rockets Satellites in Orbit Sun is a Star, The Sunspots Supernovae Variable Stars
La Misión de la Génesis: Una Descripción Socios en la Misión de la Génesis de la NASA ¿Que nos dicen los estudios del viento solar acerca del origen de los planetas?

  Partners

Genesis is sponsored by NASA's Discovery Program, which competitively selects lowcost solar system exploration missions with highly focused science goals. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Genesis mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., designed and built the spacecraft and will operate it jointly with JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, the home institute of the principal investigator. Major portions of the payload design and fabrication were carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Learn more about Partners