A Soviet spacecraft is set to fall back to Earth in the next week. Nobody knows where it will land.
The Kosmos 482 capsule was built for Venus's brutal atmosphere, so it will likely survive Earth's.
The capsule is unlikely to hit people or property, but there's a good chance of a huge fireball.
A Soviet spacecraft that stalled on its way to Venus is about to fall back to Earth, space-debris trackers say, and nobody knows where it might land.
Trackers think the object that's rapidly losing altitude in Earth's orbit is the Venus entry capsule from the Soviet Union's Kosmos 482 mission. That means it's a three-foot-wide, half-ton, titanium-encased sphere that was built to withstand a brutal plunge to the surface of Venus.
Since Venus's atmosphere is nearly 100 times denser than Earth's and its surface is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, this spacecraft is built tough.
It's probably strong enough to survive the fall back to Earth without burning up in our atmosphere, according to Patricia Reiff, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University.
"It has a heat shield and it is also more dense than a lot of the normal space debris," Reiff told Business Insider. "The odds are very, very high that it will fall harmlessly to Earth, but there is that small percentage and so we certainly want to be alert."
When, where, and how big the fireball will be
Kosmos 482 was the last of a series of probes the Soviet Union launched to Venus in the 1960s and 70s. This one never made it out of Earth's orbit due to an engine malfunction.
A still from the film "The Storming of Venus" depicts one of the Soviet Union's Venus missions, launched in 1969.
Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The Venus entry capsule is the final piece of Kosmos 482 that's still hanging around. A large module from the mission and the upper stage of its rocket both fell into Earth's atmosphere uneventfully in the 1980s.
Based on its current trajectory, experts expect the spacecraft will descend so low that it will succumb to the drag of Earth's atmosphere and plummet down sometime between May 7 and 13.
It's too early to know where the Venus capsule will reenter Earth's atmosphere, much less where it will land.
Most of the planet is water, so it's highly unlikely that the capsule will strike people or property.
"I expect it'll have the usual one-in-several-thousand chance of hitting someone," Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks notable objects in orbit, wrote in a blog post in April. He added that, although the spacecraft is dense, it has no nuclear materials on board.
"No need for major concern, but you wouldn't want it bashing you on the head," he added.
As the capsule descends lower into the atmosphere, Reiff said NASA's orbital-debris trackers will be able to calculate the last few orbits it will make before falling. Then they'll have a range of places it might land.
The spacecraft's plummet will be visible to anyone nearby as a big, beautiful fireball, according to Reiff.
"A typical meteor is like a grain of sand. A normal fireball might be a marble. This is a meter across, so it's big," Reiff said. "It should be spectacular."
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