Venera 8, a Soviet probe for a set of Venus missions, was Cosmos 482’s sibling spacecraft.
The final day of the 53-year, errant flight of the Soviet Union’s Cosmos 482 space probe is upon us. The European Space Agency (ESA) now predicts that the rugged, half-ton spacecraft once bound for Venus will crash to the surface of our planet in a roughly eight-hour window between Friday evening and early Saturday morning.
(UPDATE: I’m tracking a handful of different reentry predictions from the ESA, EU Space Surveillance and Tracking Center, the Aerospace Corporation and Marco Langbroek. Taken together, they expect re-entry to happen between 1:49 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. EDT on May 10. But the margin of error for each prediction if between 4 and 4.5 hours. So that means that the full timeframe in which we should see reentry is sometime between 9:32 p.m. tonight, New York time and 6:47 a.m. tomorrow.)
As I’ve reported over the past few weeks, Cosmos 482 (also written as Kosmos 482 or the Venera descent craft) is a highly unusual bit of space junk because it was built to withstand a descent through the atmosphere of Venus, known for some of the highest temperatures, pressures and levels of acidity in the solar system.
But instead it was stranded in Earth’s orbit after failing to reach the trajectory required to make a run at Venus and it’s been circling overhead since 1972.
Still, the spacecraft remains theoretically equipped to withstand some of the worst conditions in the solar system and as such, it’s expected to have a good chance of surviving the comparatively tame descent through Earth’s atmosphere.
That is, if half a century of exposure to solar radiation in orbit and the notoriously uneven reputation of Soviet engineering haven’t compromised its integrity.
Cosmos 482 Likely to Land With a Splash or Distant Crash
But with those big caveats in mind, it seems probable that Cosmos 482 will make it all the way to the surface, impacting at speeds around 150 miles per hour, according to amateur space watcher Marco Langbroek. Because it’s only the size of a washer or other appliance, the spacecraft is likely to do only local damage; you certainly wouldn’t want to be standing directly in its path. Fortunately, though, it’s likely to fall far from civilization.
“The risk of any satellite reentry causing injury is extremely remote,” notes the ESA. “The annual risk of an individual human being injured by space debris is under 1 in 100 billion. In comparison, a person is about 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning.”
Just given the composition of Earth, the probe’s impact site is likely to be somewhere in the ocean of the wilderness, but at the moment it could still potentially hit just about anywhere within 52 degrees north or south of the Equator.
Cosmos 482 Reentry Trackers Available Online
As of Friday morning, US time, the ESA predicts that the Cosmos 482 descent craft will reenter the atmosphere at 2:26 a.m. EDT Saturday morning, with a margin of error just under 4.5 hours.
In other words, it’s most likely that the speeding space bullet passes the Karman line (the widely accepted dividing line between our atmosphere and space, at about 62 miles in altitude) between around 10 p.m. Friday and 7 a.m. Saturday, New York time.
You can expect this prediction window to continue to narrow throughout the day. Check here and my X feed for updates.
The latest ground track plot map for the descent of Cosmos 482.
The above ground track map from ESA shows where the satellite would be expected to break up off the east coast of India, if the current prediction is precisely on target.
“At the current predicted time of reentry, the capsule would be located approximately 10 km over the red marker, labelled COIW (centre of impact window),” ESA writes. “It is here that we currently expect the satellite to break up, but there is still a high uncertainty in the precise location where it will fall.”
While it’s very difficult to track such a fast-moving object, especially when so many variables – from solar activity to atmospheric anomalies to the condition of the craft – come into play, a few online services can assist you in trying.
Chief among them are Heavens Above, with star charts and times the craft will be passing overhead for skilled spotters. N2YO.com is also a popular data provider for tracking Cosmos 482. If you have a modern telescope and number of data providers may integrate with it – just use the NORAD ID for the object, which is 06073.
There’s a chance nobody ever sees this thing if it turns into a fireball over the remote Pacific Ocean before heading for a watery grave. But after it enters our atmosphere and begins to heat up, it could become very visible as it works its way down, perhaps at a relatively shallow angle that extends the duration of its descent.
Typically it takes less than 15 minutes for an object to travel from the Karman Line to the surface, but it will fly over lots of ground in the process. Cameras ready!
