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| | | | | | | | | Genesis spacecraft in collection mode | |
Genesis Sample Return mission
9 September 2004
Following yesterday’s hard impact landing of NASA’s Genesis Sample Return capsule, Prof. David Southwood, Director of ESA’s Scientific Programme, expressed his solidarity to US scientists and engineers.
“There was immense interest here in the project. We share the same risky business and understand how difficult these situations can be. Space is a tough master,” said Prof. Southwood.
The NASA Genesis Sample Return mission spent more than two years gathering solar material to help scientists understand the origin of the Sun and the planets. Along similar lines to this mission, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft will analyse samples from a comet in 2014. Comets are considered to be the primitive building blocks of our Solar System, and Rosetta could help us to understand if life on Earth began with the help of 'comet seeding'.
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