Soviet Spacecraft Cosmos 482 Crashes Back To Earth As Soon As Friday
A space probe once bound for the surface of Venus will make its fiery return back to the surface of our planet before the end of the weekend, as Cosmos 482 (sometimes written as Kosmos 482) re-enters Earth's atmosphere after over half a century spent trapped in orbit.
Launched March 31, 1972 from Kazakhstan in the then Soviet Union, the robotic lander failed to get up the speed required to escape Earth's gravity well and undertake a trajectory toward Venus. Instead it has circled over our heads for 53 years until the relentless pull of that gravity overtakes it and its altitude rapidly decreases.
This process is happening now and will culminate in a dramatic, high-speed, high-friction fall set to happen as soon as Friday, US time. Forbes How To Track The Dead Soviet Lander Falling Back To Earth Soon By Eric Mack
What remains of Cosmos 482 is thought to not be much larger than an oven or other appliance, weighing perhaps half a ton, according to NASA. And while space debris and meteoroids of comparable mass burn up in our atmosphere almost every day, this piece of manufactured orbital detritus is unique. It was built to be rugged and resilient enough to survive a descent through the famously punishing atmosphere of Venus, which boasts crushing atmospheric pressure, extreme heat and corrosive sulfuric acid clouds.
If Cosmos 482 has managed to maintain these specifications, it has a very good chance of making it all the way to the surface of our planet without completely burning up. The Many Unknowns of Cosmos 482
The exact dimensions and specifications of the craft seem to be lost to the annals of the cold war and the fall of the Soviet Union, but an object in the half-ton range impacting the surface might be able to inflict some local damage.
Fortunately, the odds of it landing anywhere populated are quite low, according to Marcin Pilinski, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder.
'It's an infinitesimally small number,' Pilinski said in an emailed statement. 'It will very likely land in the ocean.'
It's notoriously hard to predict where anything entering from space will crash due to the speed and many other unpredictable variables involved, such as solar activity that can change earth's atmosphere.
'People who monitor asteroids to see if they will potentially impact Earth actually have an easier job,' Pilinski said. 'Those objects would enter at a really steep angle. They're not skimming part of the atmosphere for days or weeks like this spacecraft.'
The orbital path of Cosmos 482 according to the Aerospace Corporation, showing the large portion of ... More the Earth where it could potentially crash land. Aerospace Corporation
It's a little easier to predict when Cosmos 482 will re-enter the atmosphere and begin to become a fireball racing across the sky to impact. The Aerospace Corporation tracks space debris re-entries and currently predicts the dead Soviet relic will cross the Karman line marking the start of Earth's atmosphere 62 miles above us at 11:37 pm ET on May 9.
The current margin of error, however, is sixteen hours plus or minus, meaning the actual time of re-entry could come anytime between Friday morning and Saturday afternoon. This range will continue to narrow as the event draws nearer. Once it's expected that the object has re-entered, it usually takes less than 15 minutes to travel all the way from the Karman line to the surface, depending on the steepness of its trajectory and other factors.
In other words, stay tuned and heads up.
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