Latest news with #FraunhoferFHR
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Watch how an old Venus spacecraft tumbled before crashing to Earth
Before a Soviet-era spacecraft intended for Venus crashed back to Earth over the weekend, German astronomers watched it tumble through space. As Kosmos 482 took its last laps, a German radar station spotted the uncrewed landing capsule passing over its antenna. The station, the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR, has combined its observations with an image of a similar capsule to show the spacecraft's orientation and features in the radar reflection. The data, presented as a GIF farther down in this story, helped the European Space Agency track the probe in its final hours, though its final resting place — most likely a watery grave — is still unknown. If it indeed plunged into the Indian Ocean as some computer simulations have suggested, "only the whales and albatross saw it," said Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek in a post on X. SEE ALSO: Stunning video reveals Jupiter's roiling auroras. See it now. A predecessor to the lost Soviet spacecraft, either the Venera 5 or Venera 6 capsule, is being prepared for launch in January 1969, in this still image taken from the film "The Storming of Venus." Credit: Sovfoto / Universal Images Group / Getty Images The Venera mission, which launched from Kazakhstan on March 31, 1972, failed long before the Soviet Union could attempt to touch down on Venus. Because of a propulsion problem, it never escaped Earth's orbit. A half-century later, the landing capsule was predicted to reenter the atmosphere. That day arrived on Saturday, May 10. Space debris and expired satellites often fall back to Earth inconsequentially, mostly burning up on the way down. Whatever survives often plummets into an ocean, never to be found. This anticipated-yet-uncontrolled reentry was to be exceptional, though: It grabbed the attention of researchers and military officials because of its potential to survive the journey mostly intact. After all, the 1,000-pound spacecraft was built to withstand the harsh environment of an alien planet — the hottest in the solar system, in fact. Venus' climate could melt lead, and the atmospheric pressure is 75 times that of Earth. Watch the GIF of the tumbling Soviet spacecraft in the above X post. Credit: Fraunhofer FHR Fraunhofer FHR was likely the last to see Kosmos 482. It passed about 62 miles overhead on May 10, at 8:04 a.m. CEST, according to the station. When the object was not detected again one orbit later, at 9:32 a.m. CEST, researchers reasonably assumed the landing or splashdown occurred between those two times. A tracking and imaging radar like the one used by the German station is a way to observe space, but it's not a telescope. It uses radio waves instead of light to study objects, such as satellites, debris, and meteors. Exactly where and when this Cold War space race relic died is unclear, as it seems there were no eyewitnesses to the fall. The Russian Space Agency Roscosmos said it plummeted over the Indian Ocean, west of Jakarta, Indonesia, at 9:24 a.m. Moscow time, according to a Telegram post, and NASA appears to be accepting of that data. Other reports, some based on earlier predictions, varied. The U.S. Space Command, which tracks reentering space objects, has not confirmed any reports or provided its own data on Kosmos 482. An information request from Mashable wasn't answered Tuesday.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Kosmos 482's Final Descent Captured in One Haunting Image
More than 50 years ago in the early 1960s, the Soviet space program embarked on a bold new undertaking to go where no human had gone before. The Venera mission to explore Earth's nearest orbital neighbor, Venus, is to date the only mission to have successfully landed spacecraft on the deeply inhospitable planet. But, of the 29 probes dispatched on the Venera mission, only 16 landed on or orbited the nearby world. Most of the remainder got temporarily stuck in Earth orbit, falling back to the surface in the same year they were launched. One probe, renamed Kosmos 482, took a little more time to return. Launched in March 1972, it spent just over 53 years stuck looping through space before finally plunging through our atmosphere on 10 May 2025 in an uncontrolled reentry that captured the global imagination. Now, images captured by a German radar station present what is likely to be the last time we'll ever see the failed probe. The data, captured by Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR on 8 May 2025, shows the tumbling roll of Kosmos 482 as it falls through space. As for where it ended up, that is currently unknown and is likely to remain unknown, unless more data becomes available. "The Soviet-era object was last spotted over Germany at 08:04 CEST on 10 May by our colleagues at Fraunhofer FHR as it passed through the sky over their antenna. Because the descent craft was not spotted one orbit later, at the expected 09:32 CEST pass, the reentry can be assumed to have occurred between these two times," the European Space Agency explained on its tracking blog for the object. "A precise time and location of its reentry have so far not been identified. We have not received any reports on direct visual observations of the final reentry or of any impacts on ground." Currently, based on extremely detailed modeling, the best estimate for where it fell is somewhere in the Indian Ocean. This is probably for the best. The conditions on Venus are perhaps most aptly described as hellacious. Surface temperatures average around 464 degrees Celsius (867 Fahrenheit), and atmospheric pressure is about 92 times higher than the atmospheric pressure at sea level here on Earth. Oh, and it rains sulfuric acid (which evaporates before it hits the ground, but any descending spacecraft still needs to get through the atmosphere). All this to say that the Venera probes were built to be extremely sturdy, and scientists thought it likely that Kosmos 482 would at least partially survive the searing heat of reentry to hit the ground intact or in chunks. No one wants a Venus lander raining on their heads. There is, unfortunately, still a lot of defunct junk circling our planet. Once the scope of the problem started to emerge, space agencies began to push a spacecraft design philosophy called Design for Demise. It is what it sounds like: objects sent into Earth orbit should be designed in such a way that they will harmlessly burn up on reentry. However, not all manufacturers have adopted this approach, and we're still sending spacecraft into Earth orbit faster than they can come down. In addition, even spacecraft that are designed to burn up can release ozone-depleting chemicals into Earth's atmosphere. Humanity has been treating low-Earth orbital space with reckless abandon. We were relatively lucky that the descent of Kosmos 482 caused no known problems, but it's a sobering reminder that even space, for us, is not limitless. Sun Unleashes Most Powerful Flare We've Seen in 2025 Venus May Be More Earth-Like Than We Thought – And It's Still Moving The Martian Night Sky Was Seen Turning Green in a Stunning First
