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Show Thursday, August 6, 1970 Page B-l THE EL PASO TIMES 4 Aug 1970 FROM THE AIR-This is the crater made by the missile as viewed from a plane. SOUVENIRS-Reporters dig out parts of the metal from the Athena fragment after U.S. and Mexican crews removed the section. Rattlesnakes Quiet; Gone •Herald-Post Chihuahua Correspondent By GUILLERMO ASUNSOLO CHIHUAHUA - The desert is quiet now and the rattlesnakes are at peace again. The missile crews have taken away the section of an Athena missile, the reporters have come and gone, and now only a stray farmer comes to look. The Athena, fired at Green River, Utah, was supposed to land on the northern range of - White Sands Missile Range. It went astray July 11, and landed instead in Durango, near the Chihuahua border. U.S. MISSILE experts along with Mexican crews removed the section carefully, as two Cobalt 57 capsules in the nose-cone had ruptured on landing. Special equipment was used to remove them and the missile fragment for removal to the U.S. The U.S. promised no more such tests of the Athena will be made, Antonio Carillo Flores, Secretary of External Relations, announced. The missile fell near San Igna-cio, four miles from Ceballos near Yermo. THE U.S. Government apologized for the accident. U.S. missile crews worked with officials from the Mexican Nuclear Energy Commission and the Mexican Army. It was the third time a U.S. missile fell into Mexican territory. The area was off limits to all civilians during the removal. DURANGO, Mexico (AP) - Mexican peasants have found a U. S. rocket nose cone containing radioactive cobalt that went awry July 11 on a test flight from Utah, military authorities reported Monday. They said scientists participating in the search for the Athena research rocket had taken precautions against radiation from the Cobalt capsule that would be harmful within 25 yards. Salvador Rangel Medina, commander of the 10th military zone, said the scientists were waiting for proper equipment to approach and remove the cone. It was found by peasants in southern ' Chihuahua State, nearly 200 miles south of the U.S. border. Medina said the peasants notified authorities after they found the hole dug by the rocket near the town of Ceballos. • . The errant missile had been launched from a site near Green River, Utah, and was to have landed at New Mexico's White Sands missile range. The U.S. government apologized last month to Mexico for the 400-mile error and asked for help in locating the missile. Defense Department officials in Washington had said there were "minute quantities" of radioactive cobalt in sealed containers in the nose cone but the cobalt . would not be dangerous "unless ingested or handled for a long period of time." Sources said there were two small pellets of cobalt 57 imbedded in tungsten in the cone. WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGER, JULY 9, 1970 - Page 13-B On the other hand, for its part, the military was not above making an occasional concession to the past. Once, it held up an Athena shot for a cattle drive-the twice-yearly drive of the Magdale-na Stock Driveway Association from Quemado across the Continental Divide, through Datil, and on east to the Santa Fe railhead at Magdalena, taking about a week and said to be the last such cattle drive in the West. "We tried trucking the cattle in 1938," Benton said. "Never again. I know how far I can drive a cow in a day and where I'll be that night. You can't do that with a truck." |