A Soviet-era spacecraft that was designed to land on the surface of Venus crashed down to earth on Saturday, decades after it was launched. The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking agency confirmed the uncontrolled re-entry of Kosmos 482 but could not pinpoint its precise location.<\/p>\n
A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.<\/p>\n
Its uncontrolled entry was confirmed by both the Russian Space Agency and European Union<\/a> Space Surveillance and Tracking. The Russians indicated it came down over the Indian Ocean, but some experts were not so sure of the precise location. The European Space Agency\u2019s space<\/a> debris office also tracked the spacecraft’s doom after it failed to appear over a German radar station.<\/p>\n It was not immediately known how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit. Experts said ahead of time that some if not all of it might come crashing down, given it was built to withstand a landing on Venus, the solar system\u2019s hottest planet.<\/p>\n The chances of anyone getting clobbered by spacecraft debris were exceedingly low, scientists said.<\/p>\n Launched in 1972 by the Soviet Union<\/a>, the spacecraft known as Kosmos 482 was part of a series of missions bound for Venus. But this one never made it out of orbit around Earth, stranded there by a rocket malfunction.<\/p>\n (FRANCE 24 with AP) <\/p>\n Read more on FRANCE 24 English<\/a><\/p>\n Read also:
Shenzhou-19 crew returns to Earth after six months on China space station<\/a>
Russian satellite linked to space weapon programme appears to malfunction in orbit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Soviet-era spacecraft that was designed to land on the surface of Venus crashed down to earth on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[1699,43087,70,43244,413,24351,16,43245,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-91369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-european-union","9":"tag-russian-space-agency","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-soviet-era","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-spacecraft","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-uncontrolled-re-entry","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114486356690829315","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91369","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=91369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}