Testing to Assure Mission Success

Providing opportunities to engage classrooms nationwide in the science and engineering of the Genesis mission—check out the new video and accompanying instructional materials about the instrumentation testing work done at Los Alamos National Laboratory!

   LANL Instrumentation Video

Testing to Assure Mission Success: A Look Inside Los Alamos National Laboratory Viewing this video through your browser in Quicktime requires a minimum connection of 56K.

This video documents work done for NASA's Genesis mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Roger Wiens, the project team lead for the Genesis mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been working with mission concept and design since its inception in the early 1990s. Since 1997, the team at Los Alamos has set in progress and carried through a series of investigations and data collection through instrumentation testing that has served to inform both mission and spacecraft design, as well as ensure the success of the Genesis spacecraft and mission. The spacecraft is presently performing admirably in its "collection" mode, collecting solar wind particles streaming outward from the sun. It will return in September 2004 with its precious cargo, when the analysis phase of the mission will begin.