Here Comes the Sun

摘要

America's space program owes an unexpected debt to Batman—as well as to Seabiscuit, the Hulk and dozens of other movie projects. Or at least it will, come early September, if a helicopter stunt pilot who sharpened his skills on all those films succeeds in bringing one of NASA'S most unusual—and least known—spacecraft home safely. The ship is called Genesis, the helicopter pilot is Cliff Fleming, and together they may help NASA get its best-ever chance to examine a piece of the sun itself. Genesis, a mission run by NASA'S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was launched in August 2001 to solve a cosmic conundrum. Although the sun and the flood of particles it radiates make up 99% of all the matter in the solar system, earthlings have never been able to grab hold of much of that so-called solar wind, beyond a tiny bit collected by several of the Apollo mis-sions. Earth's magnetic field causes the stream of hydrogen, helium and other ele-ments the sun gives off to flow around, our world like river water around a rock.