Genesis ready for launch 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 is set for Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Launch is scheduled for 12:13 p.m. EDT. Several launch attempts last week were washed out by rainy weather.

The forecast for Wednesday looks favorable.

"Conditions also look quite good for that launch," said shuttle weather officer Ed Priselac during a briefing for Thursday's launch of Discovery at Kennedy Space Center.

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Genesis will be launched on a Delta II rocket.

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.