Nicola Jones,LondonThe NASA solar-wind probe that crash-landed in the Utah desert last week wascunningly designed to deal with landingproblems, mission planners say. But the jury is out on how much data can be saved.

“The prospects for our highest priorityobjectives are good, although we probablywon’t be able to do everything we wanted,”says Don Burnett, principal investigator on the Genesis project.

The US$260-million Genesis probecarried delicate wafers of gold, diamond,sapphire and silicon, designed to catchparticles from the solar wind. The four plates of these wafers, which were exposed to different kinds of solar activity, were madeof slightly different thicknesses. This wasintended to help researchers reassemble theplates if a bumpy landing smashed them.

NASA arranged for highly trainedhelicopter pilots to snag the returning

capsule after parachutes had slowed itsreturn to Earth (see Nature 429, 340–342;2004). Mission planners were fairlyconfident that damaged plates could bereconstructed if the parachutes worked butthe pilots failed, leaving the probe to hit thedesert at about 10 kilometres per hour.

Unfortunately, the parachutes themselvesfailed, and the probe smashed into theground on 8 September at more than 200kilometres per hour. “We have a mangledmass of a spacecraft,” says David Lindstrom,a Genesis programme scientist based atNASA headquarters in Washington.

Some of the detectors, including aconcentrator designed to collect the densestsample of solar wind, seem intact. Theimpact smashed many of the wafers,however, and also ruptured the container,exposing some, if not all, of the detectors to Earth’s air and soil — a much biggerproblem for mission scientists.

But they remain optimistic, saysLindstrom. The atoms collected from thesolar wind slammed into the detectors athundreds of kilometres per second, so theyshould be buried 100–150 nanometresbeneath the plate surfaces. It could thereforebe possible to distinguish this tiny samplefrom contamination on the surface.

The mission debris was dug out of thedesert and taken to a cleanroom at the JetPropulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. TheGenesis Mishap Investigation Board will tryto determine what caused the failure. Onepossibility is a battery that should havesparked a small explosion to release theparachutes. Another NASA mission,Stardust, is relying on a similar parachutesystem for its return to Utah in 2006. ■

Federica CastellaniOn 6 September, Italy’s health ministerhailed the successful treatment of a sickchild with ‘adult’ stem cells from newbornsiblings. He was hoping to strengthen thegovernment’s position that embryonicmanipulation is not required for medicalprogress.

But the minister’s declaration reboundedon him the next day,when it emerged that thetreatment was only made possible by in vitrofertilization of the child’s mother in Turkey— using an embryo selection technique thatthe Italian government outlawed in February.

Now the health minister, GirolamoSirchia, is facing calls for his resignation, andcampaigners are hoping to overturn the lawagainst embryo selection in a referendum,which could be held next summer.

The five-year-old child was treated forthalassaemia, a hereditary blood disease thatcauses life-threatening anaemia. Doctorscured him by using adult stem cells derivedfrom the umbilical cord blood of twin sib-lings,borne by his mother.

The parents originally wanted to usecord blood from their next, healthy child,but the blood proved incompatible withtheir ill son’s immune system. So theyunderwent in vitro fertilization in Istanbul,where 12 embryos were created and testedfor the presence of the thalassaemia geneand immunological compatibility. Threehealthy and compatible embryos wereselected for implantation, and twins wereborn in April.

The boy was treated in Pavia in August.During a visit to the Milan clinic where thecord stem cells were manipulated beforeimplantation, Sirchia told journalists: “Thisis a historical result,which awakens hopes.”

But Italy’s law on assisted reproductionbans the testing of embryos for genetic disease, as well as restricting the number ofembryos that may be generated for in vitrofertilization to three. Now opponents of thelaw are taking this chance to push for itsrepeal.

A few days after the law was passed, theminority Radical party launched a petition

for a referendum on whether it should berevoked. The campaign has struggled to collect the 500,000 signatures that would berequired before the end of September tooblige the government to hold such a votenext summer. “But this case has given a realboost to the campaign,” says Cinzia Capo-rale, a bioethicist from Rome who opposesthe law.“It probably guarantees that the rightnumber of signatures will now be collected.”

Sirchia says the campaigners are distort-ing events for political ends.“The cure of thechild and the in vitro selection of healthyembryos are not correlated,” he says. But scientists point out that, without embryonicselection, the chance of producing animmunologically compatible child who didnot have the disease gene would have beenless than one in five. Several parliamentari-ans have called for Sirchia’s resignation.

Amid fears that a referendum couldthreaten the law, a wide spectrum of politi-cians are trying to negotiate a compromise.Two members of Forza Italia, the party ofPrime Minister Silvio Berlusconi,have calledfor a parliamentary debate about possibleamendments on 22 September.

But Francesco D’Agostino, a philosopherat Tor Vergata University in Rome and headof the National Bioethics Committee, whichhelped formulate the law, is wary.“This spe-cific case is not enough to justify a generallaw,”he says.“To create embryos and destroythose not useful to us is a eugenic practiceand we need to think carefully about whetherwe want eugenics in our law.” ■

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234 NATURE | VOL 431 | 16 SEPTEMBER 2004 | www.nature.com/nature

Repeal of embryo law urged after child’s cure

NASA probes Genesis wreck in bid to salvage data

Girolamo Sirchia: the Italian health minister’sgaffe has provoked calls for his resignation.

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