Catching spaceprobes with Very Large Hooks

[fluffymark]

Righty, say you’ve got this space probe thats got a very valuable cargo. In fact, lets say been pootling around the solar system for a few years collecting highly precious particles of solar wind, which nobody has ever managed to collect before. Valuable stuff. And you want to get it back down to Earth to analyse it, right? What would you do?

Say you plan to parachute the precious sample into the Earth’s atmosphere, and, wait for it....
attempt to catch the re-entry pod in mid-air before it hits the ground hard using a Helicopter with a Very Large Hook. *boggle* Total madness, right? Something more likely to be found in a outrageous Hollywood film plot?

NASA intend to catch the Genesis capsule in exactly that way tomorrow. And they’re even using Hollywood stunt pilots to do it. *stunned*. Expect a movie to be made of this one, methinks. Eeeep. I wish them lots of luck.

What I’d like to know is, who came up with this mind-boggling plan? And how do I apply for that job?

Comments

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

They were doing this with spy-satellite films decades ago - it's old techhology.

And who else but stunt pilots are going to have that skillset?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Military pilots, but they aren't around for the long timescale of a space mission - they get promoted, moved around, leave, (probably die too, unfortunately).
The first time this was done was the US satellite project CORONA - see http://leonardo.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/Programs/corona.html
and http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/nro_at_forty_000926.html (and any number of google hits for "corona spy satellite"

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

All the Corona pilots will most likely have retired by now. NASA actually isn't very involved with aircraft development and doesn't run many planes of its own, so it's no surprise that they are bringing in outside pilots for this. Ames, where I spent the summer, used to be the main place they did aircraft development, dating back to the NACA (pre-NASA) days, in a variety of wind tunnels (including the world's largest). They are all hardly used nowadays, however, partly due to the success of computational fluid dynamics, and partly due to lack of demand. Some of the small diameter supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels are still used (you can hear their deafening roar if you are on base), but not that often.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

(Also...)

NASA doesn't tend to be all that friendly with the US military in general, since it has a remit specifically to operate at a civilian level. It's probably actually a lot less hassle (and probably cheaper) for the project to hire a stunt pilot than to go through the necessary crap required to get the military to do it. I dare say, it's probably also less likely to screw up that way too.

[rosie-rhi-bee.livejournal.com]

I think they should use a net rather than a hook.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Sort of, the net is on the capsule rather than the aircraft.
The aim is to grab some of the shroud lines or the parachute with the hook, as it's a reasonably large target.
To catch CORONA capsules, some aircraft had weird devices like giant lacross sticks behind them. You have to wonder how they managed to fly properly like that.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Is there not a danger that it could fall on the rotor blades and tangle them up in the net?

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

Update: the parachute failed to deploy and the capsule hit the ground at around 100mph. Oops.

[fluffymark]

Ooops indeed. I've been watching News 24 for the past hour, and they have "world expert on crashing spaceprobes" Colin Pillinger commenting on it. *amused*