posted 01-16-2015 09:27 PM               

Space Cover #300: Soviet Crashed Nuclear Powered Payloads

COSMOS 954

Launched in September 1977, Cosmos 954 had an unusual power pack of 110 pounds of enriched uranium 235. This nuclear package had a potential radiation half life of 500 million years. NORAD determined that there was a distinct probability that Cosmos 954 would crash in North America. In fact, one of its last passes swung low over Miami, bounced off the atmosphere and then came down low over Detroit followed later by Las Vegas.

The US Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) had set up operations to track the satellite in Las Vegas and this knowledge brought home the risk that the US now bore. It was going to crash — but where? There was a slight possibility that the return through the Earth's atmosphere could have caused the device to blow up over a populated area with the force of a Hiroshima atom bomb. To keep the public from panic, news was kept away from the press, and even U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau were given only sparse information.

The nuclear satellite broke apart over the Canadian Northwest Territories at 4:17 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on 24 January 1978 and the search for contaminated pieces began. The debris field footprint eventually spread to an area 60 miles wide and 600 miles long through that barren wilderness. This area (encompassing 20,000 square miles) is sparsely populated with Native North Americans in several dozen small communities.

U.S. and Canadian teams set up their headquarters in the largest city in the area: Yellowknife N.W.T. As the search for contaminated pieces went on for three months, US and Canadian Nuclear Emergency Search Teams were sent to each of the local communities to warn the inhabitants to not touch or get near any strange pieces they found, but to contact authorities.

There was no word in their vocabulary for "radioactive" but most were aware of poisonous run-offs of arsenic from gold mines that poisoned fish. So, the people were told "These pieces are poison and if you touch them, you will die!"

Planeloads loaded with barrels full of radioactive debris were flown to safe locations. This cover was posted during the search for debris and was found in a dollar box.

MARS '96

This Mars probe was launched from the Soviet Union, but didn't even make Earth orbit. U.S. authorities knew that it had a nuclear source on board and tracked it as it came down to crash in or adjacent to Chile. NORAD reported that the probe crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile but, strangely, there were no Soviet ships sent out to conduct a search and possible recovery.

Three or four days after the loss, this collector noted two or three paragraphs embedded deeply in the morning paper that U.S. troops were going into the interior of Chile on a joint training mission with members of the Chilean armed forces.

The crash of Cosmos 954 came into this collector's thoughts. It was too coincidental. A week or two later, after many reports of civilians in Chile surfaced talking about something coming down from the sky and exploding in the interior of the country, NORAD sent out a release that they had miscalculated the site of the impact and that the probe had crashed somewhere inside the country of Chile.

posted 01-20-2015 08:02 AM               

My thanks to the SCOTW Gang of Six for a job well done:

posted 01-21-2015 07:21 AM               

Although I'm not a serious cover collector I find every facet of it interesting. From the stories, to the history, to the graphics.