Operation Morning Light

Examines the events prior to and following the crash of Cosmos 954. Written by a southerner, the book suffers from factual errors and obvious prejudice.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading "We are just not good enough to tell New York City, for instance, that a satellite is coming and will knock King Kong off the Empire State Building at 2 P.M." - Lieutenant Colonel Yanchek, Space Defense Center chief, 1978 (Wilford, Jan 29, 1978, 1.) In the predawn sky of northern Canada on the morning of January 24th, 1978, a long streak of blue fire suddenly rushed across the starry vista northeast of the remote town of Yellowknife. Those out on the bitterly cold night, with a temperature many tens of degrees below zero Fahrenheit, saw a brilliant leading object sheathed in flames, blue or bluish red, and shining with incandescent intensity. Other, smaller objects or fragments shed off it, arcing or tumbling earthwards on their own trajectories. Even in this remote location, a number of individuals saw and reported the unusual phenomenon. Out under the starry dome of the distant north, where celestial objects appeared with burning clarity through the frigid, pure air, they watched the apparition until it vanished in the northeast, somewhere far over Great Slave Lake. One such observer, a native of the Dog Rib tribe named Jimmy Doctor, recounted what he saw: "That night I saw it I was listening to the radio at home when I heard some noise behind the house. So I got up to see what it was. It was a dog howling into the sky beside my skidoo. I looked up into the sky to see if the moon was still shining. That was when I seen the big flame going north east. I ran outside to see what it was. I thought it was a plane on fire. I didn't know what it was. It sounded like air coming out of a tire. That was the way I saw the satellite." (Heaps, 1978, 54). Of the relatively few people who witnessed it, most assumed they witnessed a burning passenger jet crashing. One thought that it might have something to do with lasers after seeing a program about them on television. Others, observing its speed and unusual appearance, recognized they had not seen a crashing aircraft, but had no ready explanation for it at all. Conversely, Canadian and American officials knew precisely what the people of Yellowknife and the surrounding areas witnessed. Within a short time, teams of scientists and security experts boarded aircraft to converge on the deep wilderness where the Soviet spy satellite Kosmos 954 had just crashed into the atmosphere and burned up over Great Slave Lake, strewing radioactive debris over an area of approximately 48,000 square miles. Those efforts would kick off one of the most unique environmental operations in history. Kosmos 954 and Operation Morning Light: The History of Efforts to Contain Radioactive Debris Spread across Canada by a Soviet Satellite examines how the satellite malfunctioned, the disastrous results, and efforts to clean up the radioactivity. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Operation Morning Light like never before.

The first in-depth examination of NEST: America's super-secret government agency operating to prevent nuclear terrorist attacks. Jeffrey T. Richelson reveals the history of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, from the events leading to its creation in 1974 to today. Defusing Armageddon provides a behind-the-scenes look at NEST's personnel, operations, and detection and disablement equipment--employed in response to attempts at nuclear extortion, lost and stolen nuclear material, crashed nuclear-powered Soviet satellites, and al Qaeda's quest for nuclear weapons. Richelson traces the Cosmos satellite that crashed into the Canadian wilderness; nuclear threats to Los Angeles, New York, and other cities; and the surveillance of Muslim sites in the United States after 9/11. Relying on recently declassified documents and interviews with former NEST personnel, Richelson's extensive research reveals how NEST operated during the Cold War, how the agency has evolved, and its current efforts to reduce the chance of a nuclear device decimating an American city.

Since the first atomic weapon was detonated in 1945, Canadians have debated not only the role of nuclear power in their uranium-rich land but also their country’s role in a nuclear world. Should Canada belong to international alliances that depend on the threat of nuclear weapons for their own security? Should Canadian-produced nuclear technologies be exported? What about the impact of atomic research on local communities and the environment? This incisive nuclear history engages with much larger debates about national identity, Canadian foreign policy contradictions during the Cold War, and Canada’s global standing to investigate these critical questions.

Science during the Cold War has become a matter of lively interest within the historical research community, attracting the attention of scholars concerned with the history of science, the Cold War, and environmental history. The Arctic—recognized as a frontier of confrontation between the superpowers, and consequently central to the Cold War—has also attracted much attention. This edited collection speaks to this dual interest by providing innovative and authoritative analyses of the history of Arctic science during the Cold War.

The safety of any space system requires a deliberate and interdisciplinary integration of the flight hardware design with the design of its operations throughout the entire lifecycle of the system. This chapter introduces the subsequent chapters that more thoroughly address safety issues associated with the operations of space vehicles, from the design of the infrastructure on ground, through launch, on-orbit, and re-entry operations. This chapter begins with a discussion of safety and risk management at the conceptual level, including several fundamental goals and definitions. The balance of the chapter describes several seminal events and lays the foundation for a graduate level education in space operations safety.