Cosmos 954 falls on Canada
A Soviet nuclear-powered radar satellite re-enters uncontrollably and scatters radioactive debris across the Northwest Territories. Canada bills Moscow $6M for the cleanup. The Soviets pay half.
A working catalogue entry, kept current. Each paragraph is drawn from the publicly documented record.
Cosmos 954, a Soviet RORSAT carrying a uranium-235 reactor for radar surveillance of the US Navy, suffers an attitude-control failure and re-enters uncontrollably over Canada's Northwest Territories on 24 January 1978. Operation Morning Light — a joint Canadian-American recovery — collects radioactive debris across an ellipse stretching nearly 600 km from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake.
Canada bills the Soviet Union $6 million Canadian for the cleanup; Moscow ultimately pays $3 million, refusing to acknowledge any wider liability principle. The episode forces the first serious international conversation about who is on the hook when a nuclear-powered foreign satellite breaks above your sovereign airspace.
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