{"id":94512,"date":"2025-05-12T05:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T05:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/94512\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T05:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T05:05:08","slug":"soviet-spacecraft-kosmos-482-crashes-into-earth-53-years-after-its-failed-mission-to-venus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/94512\/","title":{"rendered":"Soviet spacecraft Kosmos 482 crashes into Earth 53 years after its failed mission to Venus"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Soviet-era spacecraft<\/a> plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Its uncontrolled entry<\/a> was confirmed by both the Russian Space Agency and European Union 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 debris office also tracked the spacecraft\u2019s 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, 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

Much of the spacecraft came tumbling back to Earth within a decade of the failed launch. No longer able to resist gravity\u2019s tug as its orbit dwindled, the spherical lander \u2014 an estimated 3 feet (1 meter) across \u2014 was the last part of the spacecraft to come down. The lander was encased in titanium, according to experts, and weighed more than 1,000 pounds (495 kilograms).<\/p>\n

Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty.<\/p>\n

After following the spacecraft\u2019s downward spiral, scientists, military experts and others could not pinpoint in advance precisely when or where the spacecraft might come down. Solar activity added to the uncertainty as well as the spacecraft\u2019s deteriorating condition after so long in space.<\/p>\n

After so much anticipation, some observers were disappointed by the lingering uncertainty over the exact whereabouts of the spacecraft\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was over the Indian Ocean, only the whales saw it,\u201d Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek said via X.<\/p>\n

As of Saturday afternoon, the U.S. Space Command had yet to confirm the spacecraft\u2019s demise as it collected and analyzed data from orbit.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Space Command routinely monitors dozens of reentries each month. What set Kosmos 482 apart \u2014 and earned it extra attention from government and private space trackers \u2014 was that it was more likely to survive reentry, according to officials.<\/p>\n

It was also coming in uncontrolled, without any intervention by flight controllers who normally target the Pacific and other vast expanses of water for old satellites and other space debris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[28514,70,28515,413,24351,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-94512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-kosmos-482","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-soviet","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-spacecraft","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114493124157642792","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94512","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=94512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}