A blast from the past will be hitting Earth next week, as a failed Soviet spacecraft will make an uncontrolled re-entry into the planet’s atmosphere. Launched in 1972, the Kosmos 482 mission was intended to land on Venus but a malfunction during its launch meant that the spacecraft never made it out of Earth’s orbit. Now, astronomers who have been tracking the object have calculated that it will crash to Earth next week, around May 10.
It’s not known exactly when or where the object will fall, or exactly how much material will survive the plunge through Earth’s atmosphere. But experts agree that though there is some small risk, regular people needn’t be worried about it.
Uncontrolled re-entries are a problem because they are unpredictable and can result in debris falling on buildings and causing damage. It is also technically possible that falling debris could injure or kill a person, though the likelihood of this is extremely low. Still, previously space junk has been reported falling into a yard in Poland, hitting a house in Florida, falling into the ocean, and raining metal over Côte d’Ivoire.
China in particular has been criticized by the U.S. in recent years for allowing parts of its Long March rockets to make uncontrolled re-entries into Earth’s atmosphere, with NASA saying that responsible mitigation of debris and sharing information about trajectories of incoming debris pieces is “critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth.”
In the case of the Soviet spacecraft, it was launched with every intention that it should reach Venus instead of falling to Earth, so the issue is more of an accident than irresponsible intentions. But due to the construction of the probe, which was designed to survive the extremely high temperatures and crushing pressures of the Venus atmosphere, it is likely that the debris could survive its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and strike the planet’s surface.
The probe is inside a spherical pressure vessel made of titanium, so it is both heavy and extremely robust. “Its heat shield means that the half-ton, one-metre-diameter sphere might well survive Earth atmosphere entry and hit the ground,” writes orbital expert Jonathan McDowell. “In which case I expect it’ll have the usual one-in-several-thousand chance of hitting someone. The vehicle is dense but inert and has no nuclear materials. No need for major concern, but you wouldn’t want it bashing you on the head.”
That risk assessment is shared by space situational awareness researcher Marco Langbroek, who drew attention to the incoming object and identified it as coming from the Soviet mission. “The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero: with a mass of just under 500 kg and 1-meter size, risks are similar to that of a meteorite impact,” Langbroek wrote.
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