8-~ The Michigan Daily - - Friday, September 24, 1999 NATION/WORLD NASA Mars orbiter disappears in space The Washington Post NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft swept in at a dangerously low altitude upon arrival at the Red Planet early yesterday and probably burned or broke up in the atmosphere, stunned and exhausted mission man- agers reported. "I am sorry to report that we have a vetry' serious problem with the Mars Climate Orbiter. We may be facing a loss of mission," Carl Pilcher, NASA's chief of solar system exploration, told reporters yesterday. If a navigation failure was the cause of the accident, as engineers suggested, it would represent an unprecedented failure for a team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., that leads the world in aiming spacecraft through tiny, moving bulls'-eyes in space hundreds of millions, or billions, of miles distant. NASA formed a special team to investigate the event, as mission man- agers continued searching for the SI25 Million spacecraft. They were listening on varying frequencies in hopes of hearing a signal. Controllers at JPL failed to reac- quire communications with the craft as expected at 5:25 a.m., when it was supposed to emerge from behind Mars following a firing of its engines that would have inserted it into an orbit about 87 miles above the surface. Instead, according to mission manager Richard Cook, controllers realized belatedly that the trajectory had "dropped" to an altitude of about 37 miles, most likely sending the craft directly into the stressing forces of the thin Martian atmos- phere. "It looks like something was wrong with the ground navigation," Cook said. "We are, to put it bluntly ... surprised." The orbiter was to have served as a communications relay for the Mars Polar Lander, scheduled to arrive on the Martian surface Dec. 3. However, managers said, there will be no loss of scientific return from the lander because there are two other communications routes avail- able. One is direct transmission from the surface, the other is a relay through the Mars Global Surveyor currently orbiting the planet. Following its service to the landing mission, the Climate Orbiter was to have spent a Martian year (687 days) studying the climate. China rejects U.S. bombing explanation NEW YORK (AP) - Even as the Clinton administration sought to improve rela tions, China yesterday condemned a widening U.S. inquiry into allegations of nuclear espionage and insisted anew that NATO intentionally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. Turning a joint news conference with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright int# a public lecture, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said he hoped the United States would take "effective measures" on the bombing. Albright seemed at a loss to counter Tang's rejection of the U.S. explanation that the embassy bombing was a mistake. "I must say it's difficult when one is giving the true explanation for a situation when the other side does not accept it," she said. Tang also assailed the president of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui, as a troublemaker for trying to promote a special state-to-state relationship with China. "We hope the United States will face the dangerous nature of his separatist remarks squarely and do nothing to puff him up,' Tang said. "For instance, no ars should be sold to Taiwan." The Chinese official's jabs at the news conference with Albright contrasted wits announcement in Washington of a renewed effort to bring China into the World Trade Organization and Albright's own emphasis on U.S.-Chinese cooperation on East Timor, North Korea and in Asia generally. The United States last month gave China S4.5 million in compensation intend- ed for the families of the three people killed and 27 injured in the bombing, which occurred May 7 during NATO's conflict with Yugoslavia that forced Serb troops and special police out of Kosovo. "I can only repeat the true story that it was a mistake and make very clear how sorry we are about it," Albright said. State Department lawyers will be sent to Beijing to discuss compensation for the damage and also for damage caused by demonstrations against the U.S. Embassy in the Chinese capital, she said. The two then met for 90 minutes and Tang did not repeat his accusation pri- vately to Albright, a senior U.S. official said. Indeed, Tang and Albright agreed there was a need to build up momentum toward stronger ties, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. AP PHOTO The Mars Climate Orbiter, the first interplanetary weather satellite, probably burned or broke up in the red planet's atmosphere yesterday. Job Fair '99 Tuesday.October 5, 1999 Michigan Union 12:00noon - 4:00pm Kentucky community worries about radiation from government plant I~II PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -_ The way the employees tell it, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant some- times operated as if Homer Simpson were running the place. Except that what happened there wasn't funny. Workers used to wipe "green salt" off the plant lunch tables, fully aware it was a radioactive byprod- uct of the plant's main task - enriching uranium for use as fuel in nuclear reactors. They would bury truckloads of uranium shavings that ignited and burned upon being exposed to the air. They would dump thousands of barrels filled with radioactive contaminants into ponds and bury them in the ground. All the while, they were told they were working with materials that were "safe enough to eat." Now the employees and many other people in Paducah fear they are dying because of what hap- pened at the 47-year-old plant, McCracken County's biggest source of jobs. Chris Naas, a heavy-equipment operator who has worked at the plant for 25 years, told Senate investi- gators this week that he was taken off a job in 1974 after being told he was "hot"-- meaning, he assumed, that he had been exposed to too much radiation. Naas said his father turned up "hot" on several occasions during the 20 years he worked at the plant. "Today, he has a form of terminal cancer - lym- phoma. We will never know what was the cause," Naas said. "My question is: Will I turn up the same, and what recourse will I have?" In June, three plant employees filed a federal law- suit alleging that workers unwittingly were exposed to plutonium and other highly toxic substances from 1953 to 1976. The lawsuit is sealed. The Energy Department, which owns the plant and is overseeing a $1 billion cleanup, later acknowledged that 103,000 tons of recycled uranium containing a total of 12 ounces of plutonium were handled in Paducah during the period. Plutonium is much more potent than uranium - it can cause cancer if ingested in quantities as small as one-mil- lionth of an ounce. The Energy Department is investigat- ing why workers were exposed to plutonium and whether contractors who operated the plant covered it up. "We were told that the uranium substances we were working with were safe and posed no threat to our health, or to the health of our families," Garland "Bud" Jenkins, who worked there for 30 years, told a House committee Wednesday in Washington. "We were even told the materials were safe enough to eat." The plant site, with its combined enrichment and cleanup operations, is the county's largest employer with 2,000 workers. But plant workers are not the only people in this rural area in western Kentucky who are questionin whether their health has been compromised. Ronald Lamb's family has lived and worked for years down the road from the Gaseous Diffusion Plant. His father, William, who opened the family's auto repair shop in 1961, died five years ago after being diagnosed with prostate and bone cancer. Lamb said the well at the family's house was found to have a trace of plutonium in 1990. Lamb, 47, sued the contractor that operated the plant at the time, but a federal judge dismissed the case, saying there was no evidence the well was cont- aminated. The Energy Department told Lamb that do positive test for plutonium in the well water was erro- neous; he said. But Lamb isn't convinced. He said he suspects con- taminated well water is responsible for a long series of illnesses he has endured for 10 years, including nerve damage, an ulcer and intestinal problems. 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