The orbit of the probe Cosmos 482, launched by the former Soviet Union on March 31, 1972 to Venus, is falling and it is expected to return to the Earth’s atmosphere between May 7 and 13.
As reported by NASA, the ship never came out of the land orbit and, 50 years later I could fall into the earth without control. Despite its half century of life, Cosmos 482 was designed to resist entry into the atmosphere of Venus, so it is that it survives re -entry into the earth and reaches the surface.
Cosmos 482 failed to reach Venus, it is assumed that due to a malfunction in the combustion of an engine, which prevented enough speed from reaching.
After reaching a stationary land orbit, The spacecraft was separated into four piecestwo of which remained in low terrestrial orbit and decayed in 48 hours, and the other two pieces (presumably the landing module probe and the engine unit of the separate upper stage) entered a higher orbit of 210 x 9800 km.
Since then, The orbit of the landing module probe has been declining and it is expected to enter the Earth’s atmosphere again around May 10, 2025.
Space Saves
The Cosmos 482 spacecraft included a carrier probe and a landing module with a total launch mass of 1,184 kg. The landing module probe was an isolated spherical pressure container with a mass of 495 kg.
It had a upper cover that would be launched in the atmospheric entrance to display the parachute of 2.5 square meters and expose the antenna and instruments.
The probe, which was fed by batteries, carried an instrument that included temperature, pressure and density sensorsas well as an accelerometer, radio entertainment, anemometer, gamma rays spectrometer, gas analyzer, visible photometric and radio transmitters.
On the other hand, the bearer bus was a cylinder of 3.5 meters high, with two solar panel wings, with an area of 2.5 meters, and a 4 -meter opening.
Due to the proximity of the spacecraft to the sun in Venus, the wings were only partially covered with solar cells.
Besides, carried a parabolic antenna 2.3 meters in diameter, along with other cone antennaswhich provided communications.
The heat transfer pipes from the refrigerant behind the antenna, which moved away from the sun, provided thermal control. The control of the attitude of the spacecraft was carried out by means of micromotores and solar, terrestrial and stellar sensors. The propulsion system was mounted at one end and the landing module probe in the other. It also contained energy particles detectors, solar wind detector and ultraviolet spectrometer.
Risks to Earth
Now, half a century later, scientists do not know what entry into the earth will be. As the astronomer of the University of Delft (Germany) Marco Langbroek has pointed out on his website, there are many uncertain factors, including that it will be a long and shallow reentry trajectory, and it could not be ruled out that it breaks or disintegrates widely when crossing the atmosphere of the earth ,.
Being an uncontrolled reentry, it could not be said “with any degree of certainty when and where” It will occur. Uncertainty will decrease when the planned arrow approaches, “but even the same day there will continue to be great uncertainties,” he added.
The risks “are not especially high, but neither null”, with a mass of just under 500 kilos and a size of 1 meter, are “similar to those of the impact of a meteorite,” the astronomer said on its website, which for years has followed the case of this Soviet probe.