Soviet Kosmos 482 space craft, launched in 1972. Unlike its brief, whizzing trajectory through space, this time it’s come down uncontrolled through Earth’s atmosphere. Kosmos 482 was intended to investigate Venus, but a failure just after launch doomed the spacecraft’s mission. For more than 50 years, it was stuck in orbit around Earth. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has indicated that the craft may have re-entered over the Indian Ocean. European and U.S. space agencies are in a race against time to finalize its final resting place.
Kosmos 482 was the third of four missions in that series, all intended to study Venus. It broke soon after launch and never made it out of Earth’s gravitational influence. For 53 years, it circled the globe in a path that continued to deteriorate over time and in a more chaotic orbit day by day. Kosmos 482 is over half a ton and just under a meter in diameter. To survive the incredible heat of Venus, up to 460 degrees Celsius, engineers housed it in titanium.
A Journey of Malfunction and Decline
Unfortunately, shortly after its launch, Kosmos 482 rapidly experienced technical failures that made it inoperative. The spacecraft’s orbit was starting to go down and so started a slow spiral back toward Earth. As the years went on, it kept an increasingly erratic orbit that made it an extremely low-risk object to people on the ground. In fact, the odds of anyone being hit by debris from Kosmos 482 are about 1 in 20 trillion. In comparison, you’re actually 65,000 times more likely to get hit by lightning!
The re-entry thus had no controlled trajectory. This gave flight controllers no opportunity to safely bring it home to Earth. This has created confusion about where exactly any possible debris would have landed. Marco Langbroek, an expert on satellite re-entries, commented on the situation:
“If it was over the Indian Ocean, only the whales saw it.”
International Implications of Re-Entry
Under an obscure United Nations treaty, if any wreckage from Kosmos 482 survives, it will belong to Russia. That’s because Russia was the nation of origin of the space craft. According to the Russian space agency, the craft landed in the Indian Ocean. Yet, U.S. Space Command remains in the process of collecting and analyzing data from orbit to verify these claims.
Kosmos 482’s reentry concluded a successful mission. Though it failed in its intended mission, this iconic spacecraft may have had the most significant impact on space exploration ever conceived. Mission’s extended time on orbit speaks to its design brilliance by displaying the spacecraft’s extraordinary durability. This robustness is no small feat bearing in mind its primary mission of withstanding the extreme environments of Venus.
