Soviet Nuclear Satellite Crashes Over Canada
The Soviet nuclear-powered satellite Cosmos 954 broke apart during uncontrolled reentry on January 24, 1978, scattering radioactive debris from its onboard reactor across 124,000 square kilometers of Canada's Northwest Territories. The satellite carried a uranium-235 reactor that was supposed to separate and boost into a higher 'graveyard orbit' before reentry, but the mechanism failed. Canadian and American teams launched Operation Morning Light, spending months searching frozen tundra and lakes with gamma-ray detectors. They recovered only about one percent of the reactor, consisting of twelve large fragments and thousands of contaminated particles. Canada billed the Soviet Union six million dollars under the 1972 Space Liability Convention, receiving three million in an out-of-court settlement. The incident prompted international calls for banning nuclear reactors in low-Earth orbit.
January 24, 1978
48 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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