Soviet Spacecraft Cosmos 482 Location After Reentry Baffling Watchers

Forbes

10-05-2025

The likely fate of Cosmos 482.
The super-tough Soviet space probe that left Earth 53 years ago on a mission for Venus it never came close to completing has finally come home, ending a very long detour in orbit. While everyone agrees that Cosmos 482 (also sometimes Kosmos 482) has stopped flying, there's little agreement on where it crash or splash landed.
The Venera initiative lander launched in 1972 but a malfunction soon left it trapped around Earth. It was a subject of fascination in recent weeks after it became clear its orbit was decaying to an eventual impact. The rugged titanium spacecraft was built to withstand conditions on Venus, meaning it had a very good chance of surviving a trip through Earth's atmosphere to crash land somewhere on our surface.
Space agencies and other trackers use different models to estimate where and when Cosmos 482 might have re-entered the atmosphere, and without any direct observations or much other data, these 'best guesses' are about all we have to go on about its final resting place. And these estimates place that spot either in the South Pacific, somewhere in western Europe, the Indian Ocean or in or offshore of western Australia.
It's quite a range. The lack of any fireball sightings or other credible observations suggests a remote, watery resting place, which was always the most likely outcome. But the reality is we simply don't know.
Cosmos 482 was set to make four passes over Germany during the reentry window. It was seen by European Space Agency radar systems during the first two of these passes, at approximately 04:30 UTC and 06:04 UTC, but never again.
The expected ground track during the reentry window of Cosmos 482.
"As the descent craft was not spotted by radar over Germany at the expected 07:32 UTC / 09:32 CEST pass, it is most likely that the reentry has already occurred," the ESA reported
The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Operations Center reportedber Saturday morning that it had narrowed the re-entry window for Cosmos 482 to a total period of just 20 minutes, centered on the part of the spacecraft's journey when it would have been flying over central Europe, including the UK, Germany and Poland. However, the EUSST cautions that the entirety of the 40 minute window also encompasses a long arc stretching from northernmost South America to the Bay of Bengal.
The EU ground track map for Cosmos 482.
After staying quiet on the impending fate of Cosmos 482 all through the build up to its reentry, Russian leadership finally made a statement on its belief about the final resting place of the probe.
Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency reports that 'the spacecraft entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 9:24 Moscow time, 560 km west of Middle Andaman Island, and fell into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.'
Meanwhile, experienced orbit watcher Marco Langbroek places re-entry off the coast of Australia and US Space Force data puts it in the South Pacific.
This disagreement may not be as significant as it seems. All the predictions are essentially looking at the same orbital track of Cosmos 482 and then running different models that try to account for a number of variables like space weather, atmospheric conditions, the composition of the spacecraft and other factors. Because reentering objects travel at such high speeds, small disagreements in these models lead to different results separated by thousands of miles.
The reality is simply that we don't have enough data. In the past, government data from a sensor network used to detect nuclear detonations has been used to help pinpoint the impact point of space junk or meteoroids. It's still possible we might see that sort of data, helpful information from weather satellites, lightning mappers and visual sightings slowly roll in to better establish the last resting place of a venerable, if wayward, spacecraft.