Cabo Cañaveral, Florida – A spacecraft of the Soviet era that had to land in Venus In the 1970s he will return to the earth soon from heaven in a uncontrolled way, possibly in the first two weeks of May.
According to experts, it is too early to know where the metal mass of half a ton will fall or how much of it the re -entry will survive.
Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek predicts that the failed spacecraft will re -enter around May 10. He estimates that it will crash at 242 km/h (150 mph), if it remains intact.
“Although it is not exempt from risks, we should not worry too much,” Langbroek said in an email.
The object is relatively small and even if it does not disintegrate, “the risk is similar to the random fall of a meteorite, several of which occur every year. You have more risk of being achieved by a ray in your life,” he said.
He added that the possibility that the spacecraft really hit someone or something is small. “But you can’t exclude completely.”
The Soviet Union launched the spacecraft known as Kosmos 482 in 1972, one of a series of missions to Venus. But it never left the Earth’s orbit due to a rocket malfunction.
Most fell in less than a decade. But Langbroek and others believe that the landing capsule itself, a spherical object of approximately 1 meter (3 feet) in diameter, has been orbiting the world in a highly elliptical orbit during the last 53 years, gradually descending in altitude.
It is quite possible that the spacecraft of almost 500 kilograms (more than 1,000 pounds) survives the re -entry. It was built to withstand a descent through the dense atmosphere in carbon dioxide of Venus, Langbroek said of the Technological University of Delft, in Holland.
Experts doubt that the parachute system works after so many years. The thermal shield could also be compromised after so long in orbit.
Jonathan McDowell, from the Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysics center, said in an email that it would be better if the thermal shield failed, which would make the ship burned during its immersion through the atmosphere. But if the thermal shield is maintained, “it will re -enter intact and you will have a half -ton metal object falling from the sky.”
The spacecraft could re -enter any place between 51.7 degrees of north and south latitude, or as north as London and Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, almost to the end of Horn in South America. But since most of the planet is water, “the probabilities are good to end in some ocean,” Langbroek said.