Space Probe Falls Safely To Earth Possible Nuclear Contamination From Crash Had Worried Experts

The United States rushed into action Sunday as a Russian space probe fired toward Mars hurtled back to Earth, tracking its fall, plotting its impact site and offering help in the remote event of nuclear contamination.

In the end, the craft smashed harmlessly into the atmosphere at 17,000 miles an hour over the southern Pacific Ocean west of Chile. The U.S. Space Command said it could not confirm whether any objects survived re-entry.

President Clinton, here on a weekend vacation, spent much of the day consulting with senior advisers about the matter. “He did not have a very restful day,” spokeswoman Mary Ellen Glynn said.

The president talked by telephone with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia.

Originally, there was concern the impact site would be in east-central Australia. In that event, U.S. officials said there was an “extremely unlikely” worst-case scenario in which four tiny generators on board could release a small lethal plutonium cloud.

When it became clear the rocket would miss Australia, Robert Bell, a senior aide on the White House National Security Council, said, “If that’s what happens there’s no danger to anyone and that’s very good news indeed.”

Ironically, word of the expected crash came one day before Clinton was scheduled to fly to Australia on the first leg of a 10-day tour of Asia-Pacific nations.

The president, making his first visit to Australia, was due to arrive in Sydney in the southeast region of the country on Tuesday night, with subsequent stops in nearby Canberra and Port Douglas on the northeastern coast.

The unmanned Russian craft - Mars ‘96 - got into trouble when it was unable to break out of Earth orbit after the failure of a fourth-stage booster rocket.

From the start, the Space Command, based in Colorado Springs, Colo., tracked the re-entry path of the probe.

In Washington, Vice President Al Gore, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake coordinated the responses of NASA, the Department of Energy and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Bell said Clinton had offered Howard assets of the Energy Department “to locate, secure and recover any nuclear material. This is similar to capabilities that we offered to Canada a few years back when another nuclear-powered satellite came down.”

U.S. officials also were in touch with Russian authorities, including Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. Bell said both were on trips out of Moscow.

The probe lifted off Saturday night from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan. The first three stages fired properly, according to the space tracking center in Evpatoriya, Ukraine. The problems arose when a booster rocket on the fourth stage failed to ignite, the Interfax news agency said, quoting a mission director, Vladimir Molodtsov.

Spacecraft have fallen to earth since soon after the space age began with Sputnik 1 in 1957- the first artificial satellite - but have always missed populated areas.