Failed Soviet-era spacecraft expected to crash back to Earth within days
A failed Soviet-era spacecraft that became trapped in Earth's orbit by mistake more than 50 years ago is expected to crash back down onto the planet in a matter of days, according to space experts.
Cosmos 482 was launched in 1972 as part of the Soviet Union's Venera program, which intended to explore Venus, according to NASA.
The unmanned spacecraft experienced a successful initial launch on March 31, 1972, and temporarily orbited Earth.
However, it did not achieve sufficient velocity to launch into a Venus transfer trajectory, NASA said, and the payload -- or the portion of the craft significantly related to the craft's primary mission -- was unable to exit Earth's orbit.
MORE: SpaceX loses another Starship in latest launch, with debris seen streaking across the sky
Astronomers hypothesize that a malfunction on a timer caused the engine to burn prematurely, NASA said.
The spacecraft then broke into four pieces. Two of the pieces, which remained in low orbit, decayed within 48 hours. Orbital decay refers to an incremental decrease in altitude, gradually closing a craft's distance to Earth, according to NASA.
The other two pieces -- including the large lander probe -- became stuck in Earth's higher orbit. It has experienced orbital decay for decades, NASA said, and that decay has brought it close enough to reenter the planet's atmosphere around May 10.
Because the probe was designed to withstand entry into Venus' atmosphere -- which is 90 times denser than Earth's -- it is possible that parts of it could survive reentry and continue onward to the planet's surface, according to NASA.
The risk of Cosmos 482 striking people on the ground is low -- but not impossible, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote on his website last month.
"No need for major concern, but you wouldn't want it bashing you on the head," McDowell wrote.
PHOTO: Venus is shown in this undated NASA image. (NASA)
MORE: Falling space debris is increasingly threatening airplanes, researchers say
The lander probe is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere between Friday and Sunday, NASA said. The craft is about 3.2 feet across and weighs about 1,100 pounds.
As of Tuesday, the landing location was estimated to be anywhere between 52 N and 52 S latitude. This large swath contains the United States, as well as most of the continents on Earth.
The time and location of a return to Earth will likely be predicted more accurately as reentry nears, according to NASA.
PHOTO: A world map shows the possible crash zone of Kosmos 482. (ABC News Photo Illustration)
MORE: NASA confirms International Space Station object crashed through home in Naples, Florida
Astronomers are increasingly monitoring space junk left near Earth during launches of satellites and other spacecraft. There are currently more than 1.2 million known pieces of space debris, 50,000 of which measure more than 4 inches across, according to a 2025 report by the European Space Agency.
"Even if we created no new space debris, it would not be enough to prevent a runaway series of collisions and fragmentations," the ESA said in a statement.
Failed Soviet-era spacecraft expected to crash back to Earth within days originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
SpaceX launches 26 Starlink satellites from California amid foggy conditions
June 8 (UPI) -- SpaceX launched another 26 of its Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit Sunday amid foggy conditions at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The company livestreamed the launch on Elon Musk's X platform, with the footage showing the Falcon 9 rocket obscured by fog before takeoff. SpaceX warned residents in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties that they might hear "one or more sonic booms" during the launch. After the launch, the first stage booster of the rocket landed on Of Course I Still Love You, a floating barge stationed in the Pacific Ocean. The flight marked the seventh voyage for the first stage booster, which previously launched NROL-126, Transporter-12, SPHEREx, NROL-57, and two Starlink missions.
UPI
an hour ago
- UPI
SpaceX launches 26 Starlink satellites from California amid foggy conditions
SpaceX launched another 26 of its Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit Sunday amid foggy conditions at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Photo courtesy of SpaceX/ X June 8 (UPI) -- SpaceX launched another 26 of its Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit Sunday amid foggy conditions at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The company livestreamed the launch on Elon Musk's X platform, with the footage showing the Falcon 9 rocket obscured by fog before takeoff. Watch Falcon 9 launch 26 @Starlink satellites to orbit from California SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 8, 2025 SpaceX warned residents in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties that they might hear "one or more sonic booms" during the launch. After the launch, the first stage booster of the rocket landed on Of Course I Still Love You, a floating barge stationed in the Pacific Ocean. The flight marked the seventh voyage for the first stage booster, which previously launched NROL-126, Transporter-12, SPHEREx, NROL-57, and two Starlink missions.
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Forbes
3 New Studies Remind Us Eating Well Is About More Than Just Weight
Healthy foods may matter more than weight alone. getty If you've ever made a genuine, perhaps painstaking, effort to eat healthier, only to find that your weight doesn't budge, it's easy to feel like you're failing. Or like your body isn't behaving like it should. But a few new studies remind us that this isn't always true. New research published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology by a team at Ben-Gurion and Harvard Universities followed more than 700 adults with abdominal obesity who committed to different types of healthy eating—low-fat, low-carb, Mediterranean, and green-Mediterranean—for up to two years. Nearly a third of them didn't lose weight, and some even gained weight. But their health improved in meaningful ways. Perhaps not surprisingly, the people who did lose weight saw the most change in their heart and metabolic stats: each kilogram lost was linked to a 1.44% increase in HDL cholesterol (the good kind), a 1.37% reduction in triglycerides (blood fats), a 2.46% drop in insulin, a 2.79% drop in leptin (the hormone signaling hunger), as well as reductions in blood pressure, liver fat, and liver enzymes. But the good news for some of us with more stubborn scales was that in those whose weight didn't change (who tended to be older adults and women), the researchers also measured higher HDL cholesterol, lower levels of leptin, and a reduction in visceral fat (the type that surrounds organs and increases disease risk). These are not meaningless changes—they can reduce long-term risk for heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. Also revealing was when the team looked into the biology behind these patterns, they identified 12 DNA methylation sites that predicted long-term weight loss outcomes. These sites may help explain why two people can follow the same diet with different results. 'We have been conditioned to equate weight loss with health, and weight loss-resistant individuals are often labeled as failures,' said lead author and Harvard Chan School postdoctoral researcher Anat Yaskolka Meir in a statement. 'Our findings reframe how we define clinical success. People who do not lose weight can improve their metabolism and reduce their long-term risk for disease. That's a message of hope, not failure.' This idea—that health and weight loss are not synonymous—echoes across two other new studies, too. (Note that these two were presented at the American Society for Nutrition conference last week, and not yet published in peer-review journals.) In a massive analysis of nearly 200,000 people over several decades, researchers found that the quality of food mattered more than whether someone followed a low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet. Neither diet was better than the other: Low-carb and low-fat diets both lowered the risk of developing heart disease by about 15% compared to lower quality foods. The difference came from just that—the quality of foods. Eating more whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts rather than potatoes, refined grains, and saturated fats and proteins from animal-based foods. In other words, whether your diet has more fat or fewer carbs may be less important than whether you're eating real food vs. processed foods. A third study focused simply on…beans. Researchers found that a daily serving of black beans or chickpeas significantly lowered cholesterol and inflammation in people with pre-diabetes over just 12 weeks. While this one only looked at people with pre-diabetes, lots of other research before it has shown health benefits of eating beans for people without pre-diabetes. The new studies should bring some hope to those of us who were raised to treat diet success like a numbers game, with weight the only outcome that matters. The reality is that in many cases, the body is doing far more behind the scenes than we know.
