Genesis launch slated for Wednesday

A drawing of the Genesis spacecraft

By Amanda Barnett
CNN

(CNN) -- The launch of a solar probe designed to capture bits of the sun and bring them back to Earth for study has been rescheduled for Wednesday, August 8, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

NASA has squeezed in a two-minute launch window for the Genesis probe at 12:13 p.m. EDT. Several launch attempts last week were washed out by rainy weather.

"We had some luck with the weather because the Titan went off," said NASA spokeswoman Martha Heil. Heil was referring to Monday's launch of a U.S. Air Force Titan IV rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Heil said there is a 70 percent chance of good weather for launching Genesis on Wednesday, just a day before the scheduled launch of space shuttle Discovery on a mission to the international space station.

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Genesis will be launched on a Delta II rocket.

When it is launched, the wristwatch shaped satellite will travel to a point where the gravitational pulls of the sun and the Earth are balanced. It will then open its frying pan shaped collectors and soak up bits of the solar wind.

In 2004, the probe will return to Earth, where a helicopter will snag it as it parachutes to the Utah desert.

The probe's name, Genesis, means origin or beginning. And that's exactly what NASA hopes it will help scientists find -- the origin of the universe.

"The chemical and isotopic composition of the sun is the starting composition from which all planets formed," said Don Burnett of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, the project's principal investigator.

The samples brought back by Genesis will be the first extraterrestrial materials returned to Earth since the Apollo astronauts brought back moon rocks.