The remains of the Genesis capsule are examined after it crashed in Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The space capsule, containing particles of solar wind, was supposed to be snatched from the sky by a helicopter before hitting the ground, but parachutes that were to slow the fall failed to deploy. Photo: AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac

NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab's Amy Jurewicz, left, and Don Sevilla, second from left, Johnson Space Center's Judy Allton and Eileen Stansbery, right, examine and pick pieces of dirt from the Genesis capsule. Photo: AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac

SALT LAKE CITY -- NASA technicians have begun picking through the wreckage of the Genesis space capsule that crashed in the Utah desert Wednesday, with hopes of recovering at least some of the solar wind samples that the spacecraft collected over the past three years.

The technicians airlifted the damaged capsule from its crash site to a storage building 30 miles away Wednesday evening, approximately 11 hours after the capsule came tumbling out of the sky without its parachutes deployed. The capsule had embedded itself halfway in the desert sand upon impact, requiring the recovery team to dig it out first, NASA said Thursday.

"It was a purely manual operation, with shovels, to lift it out of the ground and lift it onto a tarp," said Genesis program scientist David Lindstrom.

The Genesis capsule was to have deployed two parachutes in succession during its descent from space Wednesday morning. The parachutes would have slowed the 420-pound capsule down to just 8 mph, at which point a helicopter would have snatched it out of the air and lowered it safely to the ground. Instead, it shot into the ground at an estimated 193 mph, stunning the helicopter pilots and NASA officials who watched helplessly.

An inspection immediately following the crash revealed more bad news for the Genesis team: The impact had torn open both the capsule's outer hull and its inner science canister, shattering the gold, diamond, sapphire and silicon solar wind collectors inside and contaminating them with dust.

Scientists had hoped to study the charged atoms that had embedded themselves in the collectors during Genesis' three-year, $264 million mission in space. It is unclear at this point whether they will still be able to do that.

A photograph released by NASA showed large metal chunks of the capsule laid out on tarps on the floor of the storage building. Lindstrom said the recovery team had cleaned dirt and other contaminants off the outside of the science canister and had moved it to a clean room for further study.

The canister had not been opened as of noon, he said. But, he added, the technicians could see that at least one of the more than 250 solar wind collectors was still intact, raising hopes of salvaging at least some of the mission.

Other collectors would probably be "dust," he said.

The technicians are expected to open the canister sometime Thursday afternoon. Once all the pieces of the collectors have been cataloged, they will be sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will be loaned to scientists for further study.

According to space agency policy, NASA officials must set up an investigation board before Saturday to begin examining the causes of Wednesday's crash.

Though the investigation is likely to take months, some NASA officials speculate that a faulty battery or electrical system is to blame for Genesis' failure to deploy its parachutes.

The failure has raised questions about the fate of other NASA sample-collecting missions. Most notably, the Stardust space capsule containing particles spewed from a comet is scheduled to return to Earth by parachute in January 2006.

Though Stardust's parachute system is not an exact replica of Genesis' system, the two spacecraft do share some common design elements. Given this, the outlook may be bleak for Stardust if the failure lies in the shared components.

"For Stardust, the die is cast. It's already in flight and not due back until 2006," said Chris Jones, director for solar system exploration at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Stardust mission for NASA.

Still, he offered some hope in the event that Genesis' problems were not purely mechanical. What is learned from the Genesis investigation may help NASA prepare Stardust for entry into the atmosphere, he said.

Another mission developed by the European Space Agency is scheduled to parachute down to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005. But that mission, dubbed Huygens, uses a much different parachute system and is expected to hit the ground by design, said Jones.