Genesis Crash

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The NASA spacecraft that smashed into the Utah desert last month while bringing home fragile samples of the sun may have been doomed by engineering drawings that had been done backwards, an investigating board said Friday.

Because of the backward drawings, the switches that were supposed to detect Genesis' re-entry into Earth's atmosphere and trigger its parachutes were placed incorrectly, said Michael G. Ryschkewitsch, chairman of the board.

He emphasized, however, that the panel has not completed its findings on what went wrong with the $264 million mission to capture particles of the solar wind.

The design drawings were produced by Lockheed Martin Astronautics, which built Genesis for NASA, Ryschkewitsch said. How the mistake escaped detection is under investigation, he said.

The capsule spent three years in space but slammed into the Utah desert Sept. 8 at nearly 200 mph after its parachutes failed to open. The impact shattered the special collector arrays inside the capsule.

The pieces now fill more than 3,000 containers that have been sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center, where scientists are optimistic the samples will be useful.