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A\u00a0Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land\u00a0on Venus in the 1970s is expected to plunge uncontrolled back to Earth, possibly within the first two weeks of May.<\/p>\n
It’s too early to know where the half-tonne mass of metal might come down or how much of it will survive re-entry, according to\u00a0space debris tracking experts.<\/p>\n
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Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek predicts the failed spacecraft will re-enter around 10 May. He estimates it will come crashing at around 242 kph, assuming it remains intact.<\/p>\n
“While not without risk, we should not be too worried,” Langbroek said.<\/p>\n
The object is relatively small and, even if it doesn’t break apart, “the risk is similar to that of a\u00a0random meteorite fall, several of which happen each year. You run a bigger risk of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime,” he said.<\/p>\n
The chance of the spacecraft actually hitting someone or something is small, he added, but “it cannot be completely excluded.”<\/p>\n
What were the Soviet missions to Venus?<\/p>\n
The Soviet Union launched the spacecraft known as Kosmos 482 in 1972, one of a series of Venus missions.<\/p>\n
But it never made it out of Earth orbit because of a rocket malfunction.<\/p>\n
Most of it came tumbling back to Earth within a decade. But Langbroek and others believe the landing capsule itself \u2014 a spherical object about one metre in diameter \u2014 has been circling the world in a highly elliptical orbit for the past 53 years, gradually dropping in altitude.<\/p>\n
It’s possible that the nearly 500-kilogram spacecraft will survive re-entry.<\/p>\n
It was built to withstand a descent through the carbon dioxide-thick atmosphere of Venus, said Langbroek of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Experts doubt the parachute system would work after so many years. The heat shield may also be compromised after so long in orbit.<\/p>\n
Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said it would be better if the heat shield failed, which would cause the spacecraft to burn up during its dive through the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
But if the shield holds, “it’ll re-enter intact and you have a half-tonne metal object falling from the sky.”<\/p>\n
The spacecraft could re-enter anywhere between 51.7 degrees north and south latitude, or as far north as London and Edmonton in Canada’s Alberta, almost all the way down to South America’s Cape Horn.<\/p>\n
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But since most of the planet is water, “chances are good it will indeed end up in some ocean,” Langbroek said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT A\u00a0Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land\u00a0on Venus in the 1970s is expected to plunge uncontrolled back to Earth,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[70,12022,413,7305,16,15,20630],"class_list":{"0":"post-69088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-soviet-union","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-space-exploration","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-venus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114439681855282916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69088","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=69088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}