>An international incident occurred one winter day in 1978 when a Soviet satellite reentered over northern Canada and impacted, spreading radioactive debris. Kosmos 954 was a US-A satellite, a RORSAT designed to use radar to track the movements of NATO member naval vessels on the ocean. The satellites were powered by a compact nuclear reactor, about the size of a trash can, and at the end of their mission, the reactor would be detached and boosted by a small solid-fueled rocket motor into a high storage orbit where it would stay for an estimated 500 years, enough time to permit the radiation in the reactor to decay to safe levels. The US-A satellites had begun flying in 1973; the initial test models used chemical batteries for power rather than the nuclear reactor.>Kosmos 954 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Tsiklon rocket on September 18, 1977. Three months into its mission, the attitude control system malfunctioned and it could no longer maintain a stable orbit. NORAD tracked Kosmos 954 and noticed its erratic orbital track. Soviet officials quietly disclosed to the United States that the satellite had failed and they were unable to detach and boost the reactor core into its intended storage orbit.
>The satellite reentered January 24, 1978 over Canada. Moscow claimed it burned up on reentry, but searches found that debris impacted along a 370 mile stretch from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake in the Northwestern Territory. US and Canadian teams searched the area and found twelve large pieces of debris, ten of them radioactive. One piece was emitting 500 rontgens per hour, a rapidly lethal dose for anyone not wearing protective gear in its vicinity. Canada billed the USSR 4 million USD under the terms of the 1972 Space Liability Convention; they ultimately received 2 million USD.>Kosmos 954 was not the only US-A to fail in this manner; a launch in 1973 failed to reach orbit due to a malfunction of its Tsiklon rocket and fell into the Pacific Ocean north of Japan, but that was an early test version with only chemical batteries for power. Another US-A, Kosmos 1402, was launched in 1983 and again suffered an in-orbit malfunction and an uncontrolled reentry, but in that incident the satellite and its reactor impacted in the South Atlantic well away from any populated areas. As a result of this, the US-A satellites were equipped with a backup retrorocket; it was used on Kosmos 1900 in 1988 when the main retrorocket failed to operate.
>>18705096Making a complete trash can-sized nuclear reactor was kind of a cool engineering feat, but yeah, it was a bit dangerous.
what's with all the commie epic fails threads lately?
>>18705109Isn’t that the whole theme of Soviet engineering? A kind of cool engineering feat, but a bit dangerous? I still say the neatest thing they did was getting a lander onto the surface of Venus.>>18705129I dunno, but I like them. They tended to do interesting stuff that, when it failed, did so in catastrophic and unusual ways.
