Soviet space waste threat

Press, 7 January 1983, Page 1

Soviet space waste threat

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States Defence. Department expects a crippled nuclear-powered Soviet spy satellite to crash-land probably at the end of this month.

The Pentagon said it was monitoring the situation closely but did not know precisely when or where the Cosmos 1402 satellite and its 45kg nuclear power pack would come down. It is of a type used to identify ships. ’ A similar Soviet Cosmos radar ocean surveillance satellite crash-landed in Canada's north-west territories five years ago. scattering radioactive debris.

Intelligence sources said rockets should have boosted the Cosmos 1402 into outer space when its power began to fail, but something went wrong and it began to drop out of orbit.

Nuclear power plants in the Cosmos 1402 were used to power the radar and other equipment, the sources said. Scientists said that there would be no danger of an explosion or from the uranium reactor fuel itself. The danger would come from radioactive fissionable products such as strontium 90 that built up as fuel was spent. On January 24, 1978, Cosmos 954 crashed in northern Canada. The Soviet Union contributed half the cost of what the Canadian Government said was a $6 million enterprise. The highly radioactive debris was found on the eastern side of Great Slave Lake, less than 160 km south of the. Arctic Circle.