A Soviet spacecraft launched more than 50 years ago on a failed mission to Venus is expected to crash back on Earth.
The Kosmos 482 Descent Craft spacecraft is expected to plummet to Earth at 1:52 a.m. EDT on Saturday, May 10, according to LaDonna Davis, director of public affairs with the United States Space Force, in a statement to MassLive.
The probe should re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at 19.2 degrees latitude, 300.8 degrees longitude, she said.
“While we can try and predict where the satellite will enter the atmosphere (about 10 km or 6 miles up), we cannot predict where pieces might land on the ground,” Davis said.
One astronomer who has been tracking Kosmos 482 is Marco Langbroek, a lecturer on space situational awareness at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands. In his blog, he wrote on Friday that the probe could land anywhere between 52 degrees longitude and 52 degrees latitude, which covers all of Africa and South America, most of North America and most of Europe.
Langbroek estimated that the probe should enter the atmosphere at around 2:30 a.m. EDT.
The lander was designed to survive passing through Venus’ thick, hot atmosphere, so Kosmos 482 could survive its fiery descent to Earth and be intact, he wrote.
“The reentry is an uncontrolled reentry,” Langbroek added. “At the moment, we cannot say with any degree of certainty when and where the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft exactly will re-enter … The uncertainty in the reentry date will be (and is) decreasing once we will get closer to the actual reentry, but even on the day itself uncertainties will remain large.”
The Soviet Union launched the probe in 1972, but a failure with the upper stage of the rocket left Kosmos 482 suspended in Earth’s orbit, the astronomer wrote. While the probe carried a parachute, Langbroek expects it will not deploy, given that the batteries aboard the probe are likely dead.
If a spacecraft was launched but failed to exit Earth’s orbit and instead remained there, the Soviet Union called it a “Kosmos,” NASA said.
