A Soviet spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, more than 50 years after its unsuccessful mission to Venus.
The spacecraft Kosmos 482, launched in 1972, crashed into the Indian Ocean on Saturday after spending over five decades in orbit.
Newsweek contacted the European Space Agency for comment via email on Saturday outside of usual working hours and was directed to its live blog for updates.
Why It Matters
Kosmos 482’s descent highlights the longevity of space debris and the importance of monitoring defunct satellites. Experts note that, while such re-entries are rare, they show the need for continued vigilance in tracking objects in Earth’s orbit.
What To Know
Kosmos 482 was part of the Soviet Union‘s Venera program between 1961 and 1984, aiming to study Venus. However, due to a malfunction in its launch vehicle, the spacecraft failed to escape Earth‘s orbit and had remained trapped in an elliptical orbit since March 1972.
As reported by U.K. news outlet The Independent, the spacecraft was spherical in shape, 3 feet across. Its robust design, intended to withstand Venus’s harsh conditions, allowed it to survive reentry. Weighing approximately 1,100 pounds, the lander was built to endure extreme pressures and temperatures.
The reentry was unmonitored, and the exact time and location of the crash were uncertain until confirmation of its descent into the Indian Ocean. Agencies such as the European Space Agency (ESA) had been tracking the spacecraft, predicting a reentry window between May 9 and 11.
Before this, the ESA, which was monitoring the craft’s uncontrolled descent, said it was last spotted by radar over Germany, NBC News reported.
As of Saturday morning, the U.S. Space Command had yet to confirm the spacecraft’s demise as it collected and analyzed data from orbit, The Associated Press reported.
What People Are Saying
University of Colorado Boulder scientist Marcin Pilinski said, as reported by The Independent: “While we can anticipate that most of this object will not burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, it may be severely damaged on impact.
The odds of it slamming into a populated area were “infinitesimally small,” he said.
The live blog from ESA’s Space Debris Office posted: “Satellites and rocket parts of moderate size reenter almost daily, while small-size tracked space debris objects reenter even more frequently.
“Pieces that survive have only very rarely caused any damage on the ground. With the increasing space traffic, we expect that reentry frequencies increase further in the future.”
On the subject of whether space debris can cause injury, ESA’s blog stated: “The risk of any satellite reentry causing injury is extremely remote. The annual risk of an individual human being injured by space debris is under 1 in 100 billion. In comparison, a person is about 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning.”
What Happens Next
Any surviving wreckage from Kosmos 482 will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty, The Independent said.
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