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Ed Yeates ReportingHow do you catch a package falling from the sky, carrying mysterious particles gathered from the far reaches of space? The answer - VERY CAREFULLY - as Ed Yeates witnessed today at Dugway Proving Ground.
With eyes peeled towards the sky and cameras rolling, it happened over Utah's western desert. Skilled pilots aboard a helicopter equipped with a specially designed grappling hook, snatched a practice canister weighing about 400 pounds, as it fell through the sky at 800 feet per second.
Roy Haggard, CEO, Vertigo Inc.: "Our interface at Hill Range Radar is a guy named Luke Topper who’s an expert at this. And he had us within three-tenths of a mile from it as it came out of the clouds, and it took us only about a minute to intercept."
A company called Vertigo, whose pilots have done a lot of stunt flying for the movie industry, is under contract with NASA to snag a capsule from space that's now on its way back to earth.
The project called Genesis is carrying priceless micrograms - sort of like a few grains of salt - gathered from the solar wind.
The spacecraft was launched three years ago. As it moved into its alien environment, particles from the wind fell on ultra pure wafers of gold, sapphire, silicone and diamond. It's a delicate cargo spread out on an array of five collectors.
That's why over a file mile target bordering the Army's Dugway Proving Ground and the Air Force's Test and Training Range, NASA will snatch the payload before it ever hits the ground.
Donald Sevilla, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab: "If some are cracked or broken from being in space, which is likely, we don't want them bouncing around and breaking more collectors."
For now, it's rehearsal after rehearsal. But come September, the curtain goes up for real and the performance above all this salt and sagebrush has to be right on target.
Scientists hope these particles from outer space will help them understand the origins of our solar system.
Once on earth, they'll be removed in a clean room to prevent possible cross contamination from us!