A five-ton Soviet rocket engine appears to have washed up in a Russian
village affected by flooding.
The disused military missile has floated into the garden of a traffic
policeman in the village of Malougrenevo in southern Siberia. It
apparently belongs to someone else in the same village, who had wanted
to use it as an underground cesspit.
Two dogs were found inside the
16ft by 8ft (5m by 2.5m) tube - the villagers have named them Belka and
Strelka after two "space dogs" sent into orbit by the Soviet Union in
1960.
Local officials says the military souvenir - which was designed to carry
fuel for inter-continental ballistic missiles - now poses no danger to
the public. "There is no fuel in the section, and it is no way
dangerous," says Nikolai Dochilov, general director of the Altai Science
and Production Center.
"The water flooding into Altai region is a greater danger than the
object found here." The rocket owner, Tatyana Zhdanova, says her family
bought it last year, but it had "broken the fence and floated off"
during the recent heavy floods. "Soon we will put it up for auction and
will sell it as an antique," she says.
Some people have speculated the missile engine could have been part of a
Proton-M rocket that exploded after launch in nearby Kazakhstan on 16
May.
But the engine, which is around 30 years old, has never actually been
used. The missiles were reportedly decommissioned in the 1990s and some
parts were sold to the general public after the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
The head of the village, Sergei Popov, insists there's nothing unusual
about the misplaced missile part. "No rocket sections have fallen on
us," he says. "The police are looking into the find, and that's only
because it washed up in a traffic policeman's garden."
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