|
Purpose
|
|
Genesis Samples Catalog |
|
How to Request Samples |
|
Collectors |
| Collector Design |
| Basic Characterization |
|
Facility |
|
Science Results |
|
Historical |
| Contamination Control Planning |
| Cleaning Space- Bound Hardware |
| Flight Timeline |
| Utah Recovery |
| Utah Processing |
| Utah Collector Status |
Cleaning Space-Bound Hardware
The Genesis collector canister was cleaned and assembled in two Class 10 vertical flow cleanrooms. (A Class 10 cleanroom allows no airborne particulates greater than 0.5 µm and a maximum of 353 particles of this size per 10 cubic feet of air.) One of the Class 10 rooms is a "wet" lab used for cleaning spacecraft parts with ultrapure water (UPW). UPW, which has ionic concentrations in the low parts per trillion level, is a very aggressive solvent. A small plant furnishes 10 gallons per minute of pure water with a resistivity exceeding 18 MΩ.
The second Class 10 room is used for assembling the payload - NASA's cleanest assembly room. Since people are the dirtiest part of a cleanroom operation, scientists assembling the payload are completely enclosed in Gore-Tex suits equipped with a filter that removes particles > 0.3 µm from exhaled breath. A Class 1000 corridor is adjacent to the Class 10 rooms and allows viewing of the cleaning and assembly process. Other rooms in the facility are for personnel gowning, sample storage, and removing outer wrappings from in-bound objects.
Sample return missions require chemical contamination to be minimized and potential sources of contamination to be documented and preserved for future use. Genesis focused on and successfully accomplished the following:
•Early involvement provided input to mission design:
•cleanable materials and cleanable design
•mission operation parameters to minimize contamination during flight
• Established contamination control authority at a high level and developed knowledge and respect for contamination control across all institutions at the working level.
• Provided state-of-the-art spacecraft assembly cleanroom facilities for science canister assembly and function testing. Both particulate and airborne molecular contamination was minimized.
• Using ultrapure water, cleaned spacecraft components to a very high level. Stainless steel components were cleaned to carbon monolayer levels (1015 carbon atoms/cm2)
• Established long-term curation facility
Lessons learned and areas for improvement, include: Bare aluminum is not a cleanable surface and should not be used for components requiring extreme levels of cleanliness.
Cleaning Genesis Sample Return Canister for Flight: Lessons for Planetary Sample Return (JSC-29742)
