SPUTNIK I ROCKET

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28450, 3 December 1957, Page 15

SPUTNIK I ROCKET

No Clues To Fate (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 2. Western scientists were convinced late last night that the rocket which carried Russia’s first satellite into space on October 4 had plunged to earth or disintegrated. There was no clue as to where the rocket—or its pieces—might have landed, if they did land. Reports of exploding objects in the sky came in from widelyseparated parts of the world. But the time elements —and details of the objects—varied. Moscow added to the mystery by broadcasting a time-table—-long after Western scientists had proclaimed the rocket ‘‘dead”— for the rocket’s appearances round the globe for the next two days.

Near Hamburg, West Germany, people reported seeing a red-hot glowing object plunge into the

ground at 4.23 p.m. G.M.T. yesterday. Police reserved judgment last night. “It could be the real thing—or just a hoax,” a spokesman said. They will continue the search for the object today. A bright, luminous object was reported to have disintegrated in a shower of sparks over Switzerland at 5.30 p.m. G.M.T. A third report came from a retired American meteorologist in Portland, Maine. He saw a yellow-white object in the sky turn red and then explode, at 10.39 a m. G.M.T.

In Cape Town, an explosion in the sky and a fall of glowing fragments was followed by reports last night of a thick black streak of smoke, several miles long, over the city. Dr. R. H. Stoy, astronomer at Cape Town, said: “There was obviously something there. It may have been the rocket casing disintegrating, or it may have been merely a meteor.” Professor A. C. B. Lovell re-, ported last night that Britain’s huge radio-telescope at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, had failed to find the rocket, and the conclusion was that it no longer existed. Asked to comment on the report from Hambuig, Professor Lovell said it would not be incompatible with the rocket coming down on its eight hundred and ninetieth orbit. But he added that he would be surprised if the rocket had lasted that long. If the rocket had begun an eight hundred and ninetieth orbit, it was possible that it fell somewhere in Europe, he said.

Eye-witnesset in Hamburg said that the earth was scorched for more than six feet round the hole where the object entered the earth. The object, they said, had a glowing tail like a comet as it hurtled to the ground. Moscow Radio reported that the second Sputnik would have completed 404 circuits by 3 a.m. G.M.T. today, and the first Sputnik and its rocket 882 and 894 circuits.