The robotic Soviet spacecraft has been drifting in space for 53 years. It will return to Earth on Friday or Saturday.
Kosmos-482 was launched in March 1972. If all goes well, it will land on the sultry ground of Venus and become the ninth mission of the Soviet Union's Venice on Earth. Instead, rocket failures trapped it in Earth's orbit. Since then, Kosmos-482 has been slowly spinning back to our world.
“It was 50 years ago that I had intended to go to Venus 50 years ago and was forgotten for half a century,” said astronomer Jonathan McDowell, at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “Now, it will get its moment in the atmosphere in its incoming – albeit on the wrong planet.”
The spacecraft was covered in a protective heat shield and weighed about 1,050 pounds, designed to survive through the toxic Venus atmosphere. This means it is very likely to survive this dive and can surface at least partially intact.
Still, the risk of any damage on the ground is low.
“I’m not worried — I’m not telling all my friends to go to the basement,” said Darren McKnight, a senior tech researcher at Leolabs, which tracks subjects on track six times a day and monitors Kosmos-482. “Often about once a week, we have a large object re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, and some of the residues will survive on the ground.”
When will Kosmos-482 return to Earth?
It is estimated that it is changing every day, but the predicted reentry date is currently Friday or Saturday. The New York Times will provide updated estimates during the revision process.
Aerospace companies have calculated the windows, a federally-backed nonprofit that tracks space debris, which is May 10 at 2:07 AM Eastert Time, or subtracted by four hours. Space Force provides a similar time range at 1:52 am
Scientist and satellite tracker Marco Langbroek, a scientist and satellite tracker at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has been tracking Kosmos-482 in the Netherlands for many years, with an estimated value of 2:30 a.m. on May 10, and about 4 hours.
Where is the spacecraft now?
The place where the spacecraft will enter the atmosphere is still unknown. However, the orbital data released regularly by the North American Aeronautical Defense Command can be used to calculate its location above the Earth and distributed by sites such as Space-Track.org.
Once the probe starts to refresh on the atmosphere, these calculations become unreliable. (This map will stop tracking Kosmos-482.)
Where will it land?
No one knows. “We didn't know until after the facts,” Dr. McDowell said.
That's because the Kosmos-482 is over 17,000 miles an hour and it will run in space until atmospheric friction will brake the pump. Therefore, even half an hour is misunderstood, which means that the spacecraft has re-entered more than half of the world in different places.
The orbit of Kosmos-482 is known to place it between the south latitudes of 52 degrees north and 52 degrees north, covering Africa, Australia, most of the Americas, as well as most of the southern and mid-term Europe and Asia.
“When you re-enter, there are three things that can happen: splash, shout or cat,” Dr. McKnight said.
“The splash is really good,” he said, likely because most of the earth is covered by the ocean. He said he hopes to avoid “roar” or “ouch”.
Will spacecraft have a survival impact?
Dr. Langbroek calculated that assuming the Kosmos-482 survived, it should travel 150 miles per hour as long as its heat shield was intact, and when it smashed into any crushing, the spacecraft would travel about 150 miles. “I don't think there will be much left after that,” Dr. McDowell said. “Imagine putting your car on the wall at 150 miles an hour and see how much is left.”
The re-entry heat should make Kosmos-482 occur in densely populated areas at night, which can make Kosmos-482 visible in the sky.
If the debris of the spacecraft survive and are restored, they are legally part of Russia.
“Under the law, if you find something, you are obliged to return it,” said Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Aeronautics and Space Law at the University of Mississippi. “Russia is considered the registered owner and therefore continues to have jurisdiction and control over the object.”
How do we know the identity of this object?
About 25 years ago, Dr. McDowell was in the catalogue of approximately 25,000 orbital objects in Norad and was trying to fix identity on each orbit. He recalls: “Most of them, the answer is, 'Okay, this is a pretty boring rocket.'
But one of them, object 6073 is a bit strange. It was launched from Hazakhstan in 1972 and eventually entered a highly elliptical orbit, 124 to 6,000 miles from Earth.
When he studied its orbit and size, Dr. McDowell speculated that it must be a willful Kosmos-482 Lander, not just a piece of debris in a failed launch. This conclusion is supported by multiple observations from the ground and by recently declassified Soviet documents.
