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By early last month, NORAD's computer analysis placed the probable re-entry point at somewhere over North America. On Jan. 12, Brzezinski opened the diplomatic dialogue by summoning to the White House Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin, a former aerodynamicist who knew exactly what was at stake. Brzezinski politely pointed to the possible "serious hazard to the public" if Cosmos 954 fell in a populated area and asked the Russians to share any information that would enable "appropriate measures to be taken to obviate such dangers." The U.S. particularly wanted to know more precisely the enrichment of the uranium on board. Dobrynin's answer next day was "somewhat reassuring" to Brzezinski, "but not fully satisfactory."
In another meeting with Dobrynin, on Jan. 17, and in two phone calls, Brzezinski kept pushing for more detail. Could the uranium on board reach critical mass and explode either on re-entry or on impact with the earth? It could not, Dobrynin insisted. Brzezinski signed a National Security Council directive alerting the CIA, NASA and the Defense and State departments to the probable re-entry of Cosmos 954. Special U.S. Air Force teams trained in radiation detection and decontamination techniques were alerted to fly to any impact site.
By last Monday afternoon, NORAD had a better fix on the decaying orbit, projecting the terminal track across the Australian deserts, then northeastward over the Pacific and into the beginning of reentry over the Queen Charlotte Islands, off British Columbia. Before dawn, Brzezinski was aroused with the news that Canada indeed was it.
One of the first to see Cosmos 954's actual re-entry was Marie Ruman, night janitor in an office building in Yellowknife (pop. 10,000), a gold-mining town on Great Slave Lake, some 1,000 miles north of the Montana border. She saw what "looked like a jet on fire. There were dozens of little pieces following the main body, all burning and each with its little tail of fire just like the big piece." At a Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment in Hay River, 125 miles south of Yellowknife, Corporal Phil Pitts saw a "bright white and incandescent" glowing object and reported it as a meteorite. Told later that it was a uranium-bearing satellite, he declared: "My gosh, I was standing on the roof watching it go by. Maybe I'm sterile."
From the various sightings, the satellite appeared to have fallen some 115 miles east of Yellowknife. Numerous small lakes dot the rolling rock and pine country. Such celebrated tourists as Prince Charles and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau have fished for lake trout there in the summer.
Trudeau first got the word at his home on the Ottawa River when Jimmy Carter called at 7:15 a.m., E.S.T., just 22 minutes after the satellite came down. The Prime Minister had known about the possibility of a Canadian landing at least since the weekend.