Yeah, that darn chute - but it was not the chute itself - it apparently never
left the spacecraft, which means it was something else, the pyrotechnic
charge, the circuitry that should have fired that charge (which normally is
multiply redundant....), the sensor that detects the G load of entry and
triggers timers that sequence events, or even the battery.  Lots of things to
look at, and luckily, the spacecraft is there to be looked it.  We need to
find out the root cause of this failure so we can be sure we don't have
similar problems in Stardust which will return samples of a comet in January
2006, or if we need to improve the design before building other missions with
similar equipment.  The chute may be minor, but it is one of the many things
that has to work!

Jim.

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 trisha@brasher.com wrote:

> Yeah, Andromeda Strain, that's what I had in mind! (And Star Trek....)
> Thanks Jim for the reminder about the Space Program(s). That's why my
> original note mentioned "mourning" as in sad it had a problem rather than
> critical of the whole adventure. Well, I guess I was a BIT critical about
> the darn CHUTE, seems like that is a minor part of a 4 year mission and
> to have THAT fail after all that was done...well, sad AND critical!
> 
> Trisha 
> Lightning
> 

Jim Scotti
Lunar & Planetary Laboratory
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721 USA                 http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/