{"id":66831,"date":"2025-05-01T22:40:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T22:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/66831\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T22:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T22:40:15","slug":"out-of-control-soviet-satellite-to-crash-land-on-earth-in-days-as-scientist-warns-it-could-hit-like-a-meteorite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/66831\/","title":{"rendered":"Out-of-control Soviet satellite to crash land on Earth in DAYS as scientist warns it could ‘hit like a meteorite’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A half-tonne Soviet spacecraft is set to crash back to Earth next week<\/a>, with experts predicting it could hit “like a meteorite” at around 150mph.<\/p>\n

The Kosmos 482 probe, launched by the USSR in 1972 as part of a mission to Venus, has been circling our planet for 53 years.<\/p>\n

Space tracker Dr Marco Langbroek has calculated that the defunct satellite will begin its descent around May 10, give or take a few days.<\/p>\n

Much to the alarm of people on Earth, the spacecraft is likely to survive re-entry intact due to its heat shield, which was specially designed to weather Venus’s harsh atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\"Kosmos<\/p>\n

Kosmos 482 being prepared by scientists<\/p>\n

Sovfoto\/Universal Images Group\/Getty<\/p>\n

Kosmos 482 was built as a sister probe to Venera 8, which successfully landed on Venus in 1972 and transmitted data for over 50 minutes before succumbing to the planet’s extreme heat.<\/p>\n

The Soviet Union had achieved several space firsts, including launching the first satellite Sputnik and sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space.<\/p>\n

However, Kosmos 482 never fulfilled its mission due to a malfunction in the upper stage of its Soyuz rocket booster.<\/p>\n

The failure left the spacecraft without sufficient velocity to reach Venus, trapping it instead in an elliptical orbit around Earth.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft weighs just under 500kg and measures about one metre in size, making its impact risk “similar to that of a meteorite”, according to Dr Langbroek.<\/p>\n

MORE SPACE NEWS:
<\/strong>\"Venera<\/p>\n

Kosmos 482 has an identical design and mission plan to the Venera 8 atmospheric probe (pictured)<\/p>\n

Nasa<\/p>\n

When it returns to Earth, the probe is expected to be travelling at roughly 150mph (242 km\/h).<\/p>\n

While the spacecraft is equipped with a landing parachute, experts doubt it will function after five decades in space.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t bet on that working now. [I] would assume that, if it survives reentry, it would come down hard,” Dr Langbroek said.<\/p>\n

The exact landing location remains uncertain, with Dr Langbroek noting it could come down anywhere between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude.<\/p>\n

This vast area encompasses much of Europe, Asia, the Americas, all of Africa and Australia.<\/p>\n

The landing zone stretches as far north as the United Kingdom and as far south as New Zealand.<\/p>\n

“The biggest chances are that it will land in one of the oceans,” Dr Langbroek wrote in an article for The Space Review.<\/p>\n

\"\\u200bSpace<\/p>\n

Space debris map in Earth’s low orbit<\/p>\n

Nasa<\/p>\n

The uncertainty in the re-entry date will decrease as we get closer to the actual event, but significant unknowns will remain even on the day.<\/p>\n

“As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive re-entry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact,” Dr Langbroek explained.<\/p>\n

“The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero,” he added.<\/p>\n

Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell put it more bluntly to Sky News: “It’s a half-tonne thing falling out of the sky at a couple of hundred miles an hour. That’s going to hurt if it hits you.”<\/p>\n

Satellite trackers continue to observe the spacecraft’s tumble from orbit to gather more data about its landing whereabouts.<\/p>\n

\"\\u200bSpace<\/p>\n

Space debris population in the geosynchronous region (~35,785 km altitude)<\/p>\n

Nasa<\/p>\n

This is not the first time experts have predicted Kosmos 482’s return to Earth.<\/p>\n

Russian astronomer Pavel Shubin previously estimated it would crash between 2023 and 2025.<\/p>\n

Further analyses in 2019 and 2022 supported these predictions, with simulations suggesting a reentry window between mid-2024 and mid-2027.<\/p>\n

Space debris has become an increasing concern since the 1950s Space Age began.<\/p>\n

The European Space Agency reports around 3,000 dead satellites currently orbiting Earth, compared to approximately 2,000 active ones.<\/p>\n

These defunct spacecraft can pose risks to human safety as space around Earth becomes increasingly crowded.<\/p>\n

“The uncertainty in the re-entry date will decrease once we get closer to the actual re-entry, but even on the day, uncertainties will remain large,” Dr Langbroek noted.<\/p>\n

For now, scientists can only continue monitoring the spacecraft’s decaying orbit as it makes its final approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A half-tonne Soviet spacecraft is set to crash back to Earth next week, with experts predicting it could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[12,332,70,512,413,16,15,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-66831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-russia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-sgg","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114434986854079535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}