An artist's rendering, left, of the Genesis spacecraft and its payload. The concentrator (solar wind concentrator), ion monitor and electron monitor were designed and built by a team of scientists and engineers in Space and Atmospheric Sciences (NIS-1) and Space Instrumentation (NIS-4). The solar wind concentrator is designed to collect a high concentration of oxygen and return the sample back to Earth for analysis. The ion and electron monitors instantaneously determine which type of solar wind is passing the spacecraft at any time and translate that knowledge into actions for the solar wind concentrator and solar wind collector arrays. At right, Dan Everett, left, of Space and Atmospheric Sciences (NIS-1), the lead concentrator technician and Rick Paynter, right, of Quality Assurance at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, perform a final check on one of the solar wind concentrator grids during the final assembly of the instrument. They are using a flashlight to inspect a portion of the grid near the outer edge of the assembly. At one-fourth the diameter of a human hair the individual grid wires are difficult to see. Everett and Paynter are working in a class-100 cleanroom built for instrument assembly. Class-100 means a maximum of 100 dust particles per cubic meter of air are allowed. Photo by LeRoy N. Sanchez, Public Affairs
Laboratory instruments capturing the sun
NASA's Genesis mission swung into full gear Tuesday as its instruments, three of which were designed and built by the Laboratory, began capturing particles from the sun.
Genesis, a remote-controlled space mission, went into orbit Nov. 16 around the Lagrange 1, or L1 point, a place nearly one million miles from the Earth toward the sun where the gravities of the Earth and sun are balanced. Genesis will hang out around the L1 point for nearly 2 1/2 years and then return to Earth. During this time, Genesis' instruments will collect samples of the solar wind to reveal the makeup of the cloud that formed the solar system nearly five billion years ago and will help scientists understand the origin of the solar system.
"When you send up the commands and the instruments come on for the first time in space, you feel like you are out there yourself -- it's really a great feeling," said Roger Wiens, of Space and Atmospheric Sciences (NIS-1), leader of the Genesis payload team.
Scientists believe the solar system likely began with a dense cloud of gas and dust that collapsed in on itself. Most of this "solar nebula" condensed to form the sun, while outlying particles coalesced into the diverse planets, moons and comets that make up our solar system.
Although scientists have a general understanding of the formation of the solar system, the composition of the initial nebula remains relatively unknown. Fortunately, nature provides a record of the solar nebula; its pristine composition is preserved for the most part in the outer layers of the sun. The solar wind provides a continuous flow of this material into space.
Genesis' main goal is to determine isotopic ratios of different elements in solar matter, with a focus on oxygen - an element making up two thirds of everything found on Earth. Oxygen isotope ratios vary among the different planets in the solar system, and this puzzles scientists because all solar system bodies were supposedly formed from the same raw materials. An isotope is a variation of an element - it has more or fewer neutrons in its nucleus making it heavier or lighter than the average weight of the element.
The Laboratory designed and built a solar wind concentrator to collect a high concentration of oxygen and return the sample back to Earth for analysis. The concentrator takes solar wind and passes it through a series of electrically charged grids into a bowl-shaped mirror. The mirror reflects a filtered stream of elements heavier than hydrogen upward into a centrally poised collector tile, where oxygen and other elements embed themselves.
"The concentrator is the first solar instrument sent into space that we will ever see again," said Beth Nordholt of Biophysics (P-21) and one of the leaders on the concentrator instrument. "All other instruments aboard spacecraft remain in space indefinitely, or, like Lunar Prospector, are intentionally crashed after their mission ends. This is the first mission in three decades, since the Apollo missions in the seventies, that will bring extraterrestrial samples back to Earth for analysis."
The other two Laboratory instruments aboard Genesis are solar wind ion and electron monitors. Genesis' ion and electron monitors instantaneously determine the speed, density, temperature and approximate composition of the solar wind and translate that knowledge into actions for the solar wind concentrator and solar wind collector arrays - five meter-sized panels containing 55 coaster-sized tiles made of a variety of materials selected to trap specific elements in the solar wind.
"The monitors were turned on several months ago in preparation for their role during solar wind collections," said Wiens. "These instruments communicate with Earth frequently and give a solar wind weather report over the mission's duration. We have data from the flight to L1 and it has been exciting watching the space weather so far. We've had a rather stormy autumn in space, which has been great for checking out our instruments."
Genesis will collect just 10 to 20 micrograms of solar wind -- or the equivalent of a few grains of salt. The extraterrestrial material will return to Earth in 2004 -- in the spacecraft's specially designed sample return capsule -- for study by scientists around the world over the next century in search of answers to fundamental questions about the exact composition of the sun and solar system.
The instruments were designed and constructed by a team of scientists and engineers from NIS-1 and Space Instrumentation and System Engineering (NIS-4) headed by Wiens, Bruce Barraclough, Eric Dors, Daniel Reisenfeld of NIS-1, Nordholt of P-21 and Donald Mietz of NIS-4.
--Shelley Thompson
Tom Benson, right, of the Washington Group International, explains to John Lehr how his crews used a large, truck-mounted vacuum to remove contaminated sediment from the floor of Acid Canyon. Lehr and David Mathes, leader of the Department of Energy's Albuquerque/Nevada Small Sites Closure Office, visited the Laboratory on Monday to learn about sites that had been remediated by the ER Project. Acid Canyon was just one of several sites Lehr and Mathes toured.
Town Hall meeting on acid
canyon cleanup is tonight
The Laboratory's Environmental Restoration (E-ER) Project is hosting a "Town Hall" meeting tonight to provide information about the recent cleanup of the south fork of Acid Canyon in the Los Alamos townsite. The south fork of Acid Canyon is located in the townsite near the Larry R. Walkup Aquatic Center and the Los Alamos County skateboard park.
The public meeting will be held in the Great Room of the Betty Ehart Senior Center, 1001 Oppenheimer Drive, in Los Alamos, beginning with an open house from 5:30 to 6 p.m. From 6 to 7 p.m., ER Project representatives will discuss the cleanup project, which removed a significant amount of contaminated soil from the canyon floor.
Cleanup crews used a large truck-mounted vacuum system to accomplish the task. The site is downstream from a former liquid radioactive waste treatment facility that operated during the early days of the Laboratory. The treatment facility was decommissioned decades ago and early cleanup efforts included removal of contamination from a canyon wall below the discharge area. Isolated "hot spots" remained in the canyon floor, and recent identification of these spots led to the most recent cleanup effort.
The ER Project website is located at http://erproject.lanl.gov online.
For more information about the Town Hall meeting, call Carmen Rodriguez or Saundra Martinez of the ER Project at 5-6770 or 5-6771.
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John Lehr, left, director of DOE Small Sites Closure Office (EM-34), and Allyn Pratt, Canyon's Focus Area leader for the Laboratory's Environmental Restoration Project (E-ER), discuss the Acid Canyon south fork remediation project, which recently was completed. Photos by James E. Rickman, Public Affairs |
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Los Alamos Medal awards ceremony is Thursday The Los Alamos Medal award ceremony will be held from 1:15 to 3 p.m. on Thursday. All Laboratory workers and the general public are invited to attend the ceremony, which will be held in the Administration Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3. Deemed "the highest honor the Laboratory can bestow on an individual or small group," Laboratory Director John Browne will make the first-ever presentation of the medal to former Laboratory Director Harold Agnew and Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe. For more information, see the Nov. 28 Daily Newsbulletin. To read a all employee memo from John Browne, click here. |
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Bioscience's Trewhella to speak on biothreats, anthrax Thursday at Research Park
Jill Trewhella, director of the Laboratory's Biosciences (B) Division, is speaking about biothreats, including anthrax, Thursday evening in the Los Alamos Research Park near the Lab.
The talk is co-sponsored by the Laboratory and the Los Alamos League of Women Voters and begins at 7:30 p.m. in the second floor conference rooms 203-A and B. The Research Park is located across West Jemez Road from the Lab's Technical Area 3.
The talk is free and open to the public. After Trewhella has completed her presentation, there will be a short question and answer session.
For more information, contact Linda Anderman of the Community Relations (CRO) office at 5-9196 or 1-800-508-4400.
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Actinide Research Quarterly is now online The latest issue of "The Actinide Research Quarterly" is now online. This quarter's magazine focuses on three graduate and postdoctoral students in the Nuclear Materials Technology (NMT) Division and their research. Allen Hartford of the Science and Technology Base (STB) Program Office wrote a guest editorial on the importance of student programs to the Laboratory as a whole. There also are articles about a powerful technique being used in NMT and the Materials Science and Technology (MST) divisions to study phase transformations in plutonium, and researchers' efforts to come up with a viable fuel form for the accelerator transmutation of waste. The Actinide Research Quarterly can be found at http://www.lanl.gov:80/orgs/nmt/nmtdo/AQarchive/01fall/01fall.pdf online. (Adobe Acrobat Reader required) |
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Operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration, of the US Department of Energy. |
Women leaders
2002 symposium March 7-8 at UC, San Francisco
