Utah Test and Training Range

The UTTR works in close conjunction with Dugway Proving Ground for military training exercises.

The solar wind particle collectors were made of wafers of aluminum, sapphire, silicon, germanium, gold and diamond-like amorphous carbon.

When the capsule hit the desert floor, these wafers shattered into over 10,000 pieces of material.

Some weeks later, one of the lead scientists and the supervisor of the engineering technicians came upon what turned out to be the solar wind concentrator.

Protected by a couple of aluminum braces and brackets, the concentrator had survived almost completely intact with only one small crack in one of its quadrants.