Much can be done with samples returned to Earth which is not possible by remote analysis methods, admirably demonstrated by the Genesis mission, the first sample-return mission since the Apollo program.
An international team of scientists, including Chris Coath from the University of Bristol, have measured oxygen isotopes in solar wind, captured by NASA's Genesis mission, to infer the isotopic composition of the Sun, and, by inference, the solar system as a whole. Their results are published in Science. NASA's Genesis mission crash-landed back on Earth in 2004. The spacecraft spent more than two years in orbit around the sun collecting solar wind, which consists of charged particles, on various ultra-pure collector materials. Fortunately, the collector with the greatest scientific value survived the crash almost intact. Its primary purpose was to measure the relative abundances of the three isotopes of oxygen: 16O, 17O and 18O. Despite the length of the mission, the solar wind is so rarefied that the small number of atoms collected required a dedicated mass spectrometer, the MegaSIMS, and years of technique development to measure the tiny quantities of implanted oxygen with sufficient precision.
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