GENESIS MISSION STATUS REPORT                 Sept. 30, 2004

     The Genesis team is preparing to ship its samples of the 
sun from the mission's temporary clean room at the U.S. Army 
Proving Ground, Dugway, Utah, to NASA's Johnson Space Center 
(JSC), Houston.

"We have essentially completed the recovery and documentation 
process and now are in the business of preparing everything 
for transport," said Eileen Stansbery, JSC assistant director 
of astromaterials research and exploration science. "We still 
have a way to go before we can quantify our recovery of the 
solar sample. I can tell you we have come a long way from 
September 8, and things are looking very, very good," she 
said.

A major milestone in the process was the recovery of the 
Genesis mission's four separate segments of the concentrator 
target. Designed to measure the isotopic ratios of oxygen and 
nitrogen, the segments contain, within their structure, the 
samples that are the mission's most important science goal.

"Retrieving the concentrator target was our number one 
priority," Stansbery said. "When I first saw three of the 
four target segments were intact, and the fourth was mostly 
intact, my heart leapt. Inside those segments are three years 
of the solar samples, which to the scientific community, 
means eons worth of history of the birth of our solar system. 
I saw those, and I knew we had just overcome a major hurdle," 
she said.

Other milestones in the recovery process included the 
discovery the gold foil collector was undamaged and in 
excellent condition. The gold foil, which is expected to 
contain almost a million billion atoms of solar wind, was 
considered the number two priority for science recovery. The 
polished aluminum collector was misshapen by the impact. 
However, it is intact and expected to also yield secrets 
about the sun. Another occurred when the clean room team 
disassembled the collector arrays. They revealed, among large 
amounts of useable array material, some almost whole sapphire 
and coated sapphire collectors and a metallic glass 
collector.

Packing solar samples for transport is a little different 
than packing a house-worth of belongings for a cross-country 
move. After the meticulous process of inspection and 
documentation, each segment of collector gets its own ID 
number, photograph and carrying case. The samples and 
shipping containers fill the space of about two full size 
refrigerators.  The Genesis material will probably move to 
JSC within the next week.

"If you had told me September 8, we would be ready to move 
Genesis samples to Houston within the month I would have 
replied, 'no way,'" said Genesis Project Manager Don Sweetnam 
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "But 
here we are, with an opportunity to fulfill our major science 
objectives. It is a great day for Genesis, and I expect many 
more to come," he said.

_______________

Gretchen Cook-Anderson
Headquarters, Washington 
(Phone: 202/358-0836)

D.C. Agle 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/393-9011)

Bill Jeffs
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(Phone: 281/483-5035)

RELEASE: 04-325