NASA Hired Hollywood Stunt Pilots to Catch a Falling Spacecraft With a Fishing Hook. Four Upside-Down Switches Ruined It

NASA hired Hollywood stunt pilots and used a helicopter “fishing hook” to recover the Genesis capsule after its return from a three-year mission collecting samples from the Sun, but a late design error nearly doomed the recovery. On 8 September 2004, two helicopters over Utah’s test and training range waited to catch the roughly five-foot-wide capsule in midair because the cargo was too fragile for a normal landing. The teams had rehearsed the catch 11 times without a miss, using an 18-foot pole with a hook to snag a parafoil and pay out about 400 feet of Technora line from a winch to soften the jolt. However, four small spring switches were installed upside down, preventing parachutes from opening; the capsule struck the Utah desert at 193 miles per hour. The mission still succeeded later—seven years afterward—after the scientific sample was recovered from sand with tweezers.