YOU’D think that by now, NASA should be able to tell up from down. Not so in the case of their Genesis space capsule, which crashed into the desert in Utah instead of parachuting gently down so that helicopter stunt pilots could pluck it to safety.
Since its launch in August 2001, the capsule had been collecting precious particles from the solar wind that would have told us something about the composition of the solar system. But after re-entering Earth’s atmosphere on 8 September, Genesis plunged into the ground and much of its payload was lost.
On 15 October, investigators…
