After 53 years, 2 months and 9 days orbiting the earth, The Kosmos 482 Soviet spacecraft will fall out of control on Earth this Saturday. This will end a mission whose initial destination was to reach Venus and become the second machine created by man to land on its surface. And from there comes the problem. The landing module, which is the component of Kosmos 482 that has been wandering all this time in the Earth’s orbit, is Designed to survive as long as possible in the extreme conditions of the Venus atmosphereso he is afraid that the land is going through Without disintegrating and impact somewhere on our planet.
If Kosmos 482 has been orbiting our planet all this time instead of addressing Venus it was for A malfunction that prevented him from escaping the attraction of the earth. Thus, the one that was going to be the capsule Venera 8 It was renamed Kosmos 482, being Kosmos the name that the Soviet Union put to all its satellites in orbit, regardless of what its purpose was, as in this case.
‘As was built to withstand the hard atmosphere of Venus, There is a real possibility of surviving the intact reentry‘, he said Marco Langbroekexpert in monitoring of satellites from the Netherlands that has studied the remains of Kosmos 482 for years. If it exceeds the reentry in the atmosphere, ‘We will have a metal object of half a ton falling from the sky’he said Jonathan McDowellfrom the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics, to The Guardian. The European Space Agency (That, for its acronym in English) has affirmed that it is ‘Very likely’ That Kosmos 482 crosses the one -piece atmosphere and impacts the earth.
Where will Kosmos 482 fall?
The risk of doing so in some inhabited area It is not high, but not non -existent. Langbroek explained that You cannot calculate where the landing module will fall before the reentry begins. Until then, we have a trajectory that is located between 52 degrees of north and south latitude, so it never flies on the northernmost parts of Canada, Europe and Russia. Yes, it does it as north as Canada and the United Kingdom, and as southern as Chile and South Africa. Spain is, therefore, in its trajectory.
When will the re -entry into the atmosphere of Kosmos 482
‘As we approach the reentry, the uncertainty in the prediction decreases,’ explains the European space agency on the website that tracks Kosmos 482. ‘The remaining uncertainty is caused by The difficulty of modeling the atmosphere, the influence of the space climate and the unknowns on the object itself, as in what direction it is looking‘.
Thus, the forecasts that give institutions and experts have a margin of error of several hours. The THAT places the time of the beginning of the reentry to the 10:16Peninsular time, this Saturday, May 10, with a margin of error of just over 8 hours, which extends the window from approximately 2 in the morning until after six in the afternoon.
The Aerospace Corporation Bet on the 07:54 hourswith a variation above and below 9 hours, so it could occur even before midnight.
Langbroek places the reentry to 09:34 hourswith a margin of error somewhat greater, 10 hours.
How long will the reentry of Kosmos 482 in the atmosphere
Once the satellite reaches a critical altitude, between 120 and 80 km of altitude, the terminal phase of the reentry, since it begins to heat up to the impact or complete disintegration, usually lasts Between 5 and 15 minutes.
Kosmos 482 has a parachute To stop its descent, but it is unlikely that the system will work after all these years.
What danger there is that Kosmos 482 causes damage
When impacting the earth, Kosmos 482, which weighs 495 kilograms And it has a diameter of one meterwill do it to 240 kilometers per houraccording to Langbroek. The aerospace corporation says that for any individual on earth it is ‘Much more likely’ to be achieved by a ray than by Kosmos 482.
The US government security threshold 1 between 10,000. The aerospace corporation projects that the risk of at least one injury or death by Kosmos 482 is 0.4 between 10,000 If the descent ship reaches the intact surface, which is most likely.
Why is Kosmos 482 to cross the intact atmosphere
Venus’s atmosphere can be described as infernal Without fear of exaggerating. On its surface there are temperatures of more than 460 ° C.enough to melt lead, and A pressure 90 times higher than land. In addition, its atmosphere is mainly composed of carbon dioxide, with sulfuric acid clouds. To face that environment, Soviet engineers created capsules extremely resistant.
The Kosmos 482/Venera 8 descent module has a spherical shape and is made of a housing 5 cm titanium thicknessa heat resistant metal, corrosion and deformations under pressure. That ‘shell’ was protected by Several layers of thermal insulationincluding a shield that burned controlledly when entering the atmosphere, thus dissipating the extreme heat.
These conditions are those that have led to experts and space agencies to consider likely to fall intact on earth.