11-05-2025
- Science
- Sydney Morning Herald
Soviet spacecraft plunges to Earth after 50 years stuck in space
A Cold War-era spacecraft has come crashing down to Earth after being stuck in orbit for more than five decades.
An unconfirmed report from Russian space agency Roscosmos claimed that the Kosmos 482 splashed down in the Indian Ocean, west of Jakarta.
Experts from around the globe had been monitoring Kosmos 482, but its eccentric orbit, coupled with space weather, made its potential landing site difficult to predict.
In an update on its Telegram channel, Roscosmos said: 'The descent of the spacecraft was monitored by the automated warning system for hazardous situations in near-Earth space.
'According to calculations by specialists from TsNIIMash [part of Roscosmos], the spacecraft entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 9.24 Moscow time, 560 kilometres west of Middle Andaman Island, and fell into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.
'The spacecraft was launched in the spring of 1972 to study Venus, but due to a malfunction of the booster block, it remained in a high elliptical orbit of the Earth, gradually approaching the planet.'
Both the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking Operations Centres and the US Space Command have been monitoring the probe after it suffered a rocket malfunction and ended up trapped in orbit around Earth for 53 years.
The European Space Agency (ESA) space debris office had calculated that the craft would 'come down at a point between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south of the equator'.
