A Soviet satellite once bound for Venus is about to crash back down to earth after more than half a century in space.
The Kosmos 482 Descent Craft has been floating around in outer space for more than 50 years, stuck in Earth’s orbit.
It’s estimated the craft will descend through the atmosphere at some point between May 8 and 12 – and the potential area it could hit when it crash lands is huge.
Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in space situational awareness at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands, has predicted its return and currently believes it will re-enter the atmosphere on Saturday, May 10 – though there is a 20-hour margin of error on either side of this.
And due to the craft being a lander designed to survive passing through Venus’s atmosphere, Marco predicts it could survive re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.
Whether it survives the impact on Earth’s surface remains to be seen – he warns the parachute system may not work after spending 53 years in orbit.
Discussing the risks associated with the craft’s re-entry, Marco said: ‘The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero: with a mass of just under 500kg and 1metre (3ft) size, risks are somewhat similar to that of a meteorite impact.
‘A re-entry analysis to ground level suggests an impact speed (after atmospheric deceleration) of about 65-70metres per second (150mph), assuming the re-entering lander did not break up or extensively ablate during re-entry.’
Where could it crash?
The potential area where the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft could land back on Earth is absolutely huge.
The craft is predicted to land anywhere between 52° north and 52° south – which covers the entirety of Africa, South America, Asia, Australia, and huge swathes of Europe and North America.
However, the potential crash zone also includes huge swathes of ocean, meaning the odds of the craft hitting a populated area are very slim.
When was the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft launched?
The Kosmos 482 Descent Craft was launched on March 31, 1972, and soon after it broke into several pieces.
The craft got stuck in an elliptical orbit around Earth due to a failure in the upper stage of the rocket that launched it into space in the first place.
Its main body re-entered the atmosphere on May 5, 1981, and the rest of the craft has been orbiting the planet ever since.
How to track Kosmos 482
If you want to keep an eye on the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft, there’s a live tracking website watching its movements.
At the time of writing it was floating above the Crozet Islands, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, south east of the most southerly point of South Africa.
How often do satellites crash back on Earth?
There are roughly 35,000 pieces of space debris that are more than 10cm in size being tracked by experts at the moment, with about 10,000 active satellites in orbit.
Objects caught in Earth’s gravity undergo a process called orbital decay, which means they get closer and closer to the planet as time goes on until eventually falling back through the atmosphere.
Most of the time, these pieces of debris either burn up in the atmosphere or, if they survive, land in the sea or unpopulated areas.
According to the European Space Agency, about 160 large objects made uncontrolled re-entries in 2021.
And the US Federal Aviation Administration warned in 2023 that by 2035, if satellite growth continues, there could be 28,000 objects re-entering the atmosphere each year – which could be expected to kill or injure someone every two years.
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