The Kosmos 482 Russian spacecraft has completed its journey for about 50 years on the Earth’s orbit this weekend. Experts say this would have collapsed on our planet on the morning of May 10th.
Cosmos 482 Photo: x
The latest forecasts of the European Space Agency (ESA) showed that the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft probe was observed by radar systems above Germany at about 06:30 (07:30 – Romania time) and 08:04 CESC (09:04 – Romania time).
“As the ship’s descent was not spotted by radar above Germany at the time stipulated 07:32 UTC/09: 32 CEST, it is very likely that the re -entry has already taken place”, States ESA.
The Kosmos 48 probe was built and launched in 1972 as part of the Venera mission of the Soviet Union to explore the planet Venus. The Soviets successfully launched the Venera 7 and 8 wells, which were the first two spacecraft that successfully landed on Venus in 1970 and 1972 respectively.
Kosmos 482 was built as a sister of Venera 8. However, due to a failure on the Soyuz rocket that launched it in space, the probe failed to reach a sufficient speed to reach Venus, stuck on an elliptical, or oval orbit, around 50 years.
Designed to survive a flame fall through the atmosphere of the planet Venus, Kosmos 482 Descent Craft is likely to stay whole when it will collapse on Earth this weekend, said Marco Langbro, a lecturer in the field of space situation at the Delft Technical University of the Netherlands, which for the first time.
Kosmos 48 is just one of the over 1.2 million pieces of space waste in the orbit of the Earth larger than 0.4 inches (1 centimeter), according to an ESA report published in April.
Falling like a meteorite through the atmosphere, the ship with a width of about 3 feet (1 meter) could practically hit anywhere on the planet. Experts will not be able to delimit the landing area only a few hours before re -entering, due to the somewhat unpredictable effects of atmospheric resistance.
