Spacecraft to drop uncontrolled to Earth around May 11: “A half-ton metal object falling from the sky”

Part of a failed space probe is expected to tumble back to Earth in an “uncontrolled reentry” this month, more than half a century after it was launched as part of the Soviet Union’s exploration of the planet Venus.

When will the craft return to Earth?

Marco Langbroek, an orbital behavior expert with SatTrackCam Leiden in the Netherlands, estimates that the object will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in the second week of May. “The current nominal forecast is reentry on 11 May,” Langbroek said in a blog post on Saturday.

What is the spacecraft?

Known as Kosmos 482, the probe was launched in March 1972 under the Soviet Union’s Venera program, which sent several space probes to Venus.

While other Venera spacecraft landed on Venus and managed to send back photos from the surface of the inhospitable, carbon dioxide-rich planet, Kosmos 482 failed to escape low Earth orbit after suffering a malfunction.

The craft broke up into several pieces, some of which have already fallen back to the surface of our planet.

One of the pieces that remained in orbit was Kosmos 482’s landing module, which is the object expected to return to Earth in the coming days.

“Possible it will survive reentry intact”

The module’s design means it stands a realistic chance of withstanding the ultra-high temperatures that are generated when an object falls through the Earth’s atmosphere, Langbroek says.

“As this is a lander, which is in a semi-globular Titanium protective shell, that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact,” he writes.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has told the Associated Press that if the craft survives re-entry intact, “you have a half-ton metal object falling from the sky”.

However, while Langbroek cautions that the risks “are not zero”, he adds that people “should not be too worried” about Kosmos 482’s high-speed return to Earth, even if the lander does not break apart on re-entry.

“The risk is similar to that of a random meteorite fall, several of which happen each year,” Langbroek explained to AP. “You run a bigger risk of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime.”

Where will the Kosmos 482 lander end up?

Writing in his SatTrackCam blog, Langbroek forecasts that the lander could re-enter “anywhere between latitude 52 N[orth] and 52 S[outh]”. This large area extends as far north as southern Canada and northern Europe, and as far south as the lower tip of South America.

Given that over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, he tells AP, “chances are good it will indeed end up in some ocean”.

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