Mars probe crash puts Australia on red alert

RUSSIA'S disabled Mars probe, Mars 96, crashed into the Pacific Ocean west of Chile early this morning, according to the US Space…

RUSSIA'S disabled Mars probe, Mars 96, crashed into the Pacific Ocean west of Chile early this morning, according to the US Space Command.

"It is out of space," a spokesman told Reuter. He said there were no additional details on the crash or its exact site, but it was clearly in "a broad ocean area somewhere west of Chile".

Earlier, Australia hit the panic button when President Clinton, rang the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, at 7.30 a.m. local time with the news that the satellite carrying plutonium was out of control and likely to hit Australia.

Mr Howard summoned an immediate meeting of the National Security Council which put the, Australian Defence Forces on standby to deal with any emergency.

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He also rang the premiers of New South Wales and Queensland, while his deputy, Mr Tim Fischer, alerted the government of ,the Northern Territory. In a hastily convened media briefing in Canberra early yesterday Mr Howard said the plutonium was contained in four batteries, about the size of film canisters, each containing 50g of plutonium, but that the batteries were designed to withstand both re entry and the impact of landing.

However, estimates of both the timing and area of re entry varied widely, with the area at risk covering tens of thousands of square miles ranging from northern New South Wales to the Timor Sea between Indonesia and northern Australia.

The satellite was described as about the size of a car, with some news reports saying it weighed seven tonnes.

The national crisis sparked by this interplanetary ballistic bungle failed to stifle the Australian irreverent sense of humour.

Within hours of President Clinton's telephone call, ABC Radio's Adelaide newsroom announced it had received a phone call from Mr Ted Drover, who runs the Wavehill cattle station in the Northern Territory, about 350 km (220 miles) north west of Alice Springs.

Mr Drover had reportedly rung the deputy prime minister, Mr Fischer, and been told to start moving his cattle south.

That was news and a bit of a laugh for the folks at Wavehill a station with 46,000 cattle spread over 3.2 million acres.

Who Mr Ted Drover really was remains a mystery. Wavehill's manager, Mr Gavin Hogue, was not at the cattle station and could not be contacted yesterday.

Saner voices quickly prevailed.

Dr Andrew Taylor of the University of Adelaide's physics department, who worked on some of the electronics for the Russians previous Mars 94 project while at the University of Canterbury in the UK some years ago, assured ABC listeners that the risk from the plutonium was probably less than the risk of being hit on the head by a piece of metal from the spacecraft - and even that risk was microscopic.

Mr Philip Stenchion, of Emergency Management Australia, said the probe landed between Eastern Island and the Chilean capital of Santiago.

"It came down 31 south and, 96.3 west. It's actually off South America, near Easter Island," he said.

Mars probes, both American and Russian, have a long history of problems: 18 of the 26 attempts to send rockets to the planet have failed so far. On November 7th, however, the US Mars Global Surveyor was launched and is currently on course to reach Mars' next September.

Next month Mars Pathfinder, another US probe carrying an 11 kg Mars Rover vehicle, is due to be launched from Cape Canaveral.

Up to 20 countries, including Ireland, are understood to have put scientific instruments aboard thee ill fated Mars 96. It is believed that instruments were being hastily added to the craft in the last coupled of weeks as another opportunity to launch the craft would not occur for 2 1/2 years.

A team led by Prof Susan McKenna Lawlor and working for Space Technology (Ireland) Ltd, based in Maynooth, designed an instrument called SLED II, which was to follow up studies on "interplanetary charged particles" carried out by the first Irish SLED instrument, flown to Mars in 1989.

Prof McKenna Lawlor, who was in Russia for the launch, was note available for comment. Mr Peter Rusynak, technical director for Space Technology (Ireland) Ltd, said Prof McKenna Lawlor had been working for about six years on the instruments carried by the ,Mars 96 mission.