A spacecraft once launched by the now-dissolved Soviet Union is expected to make an uncontrolled crash landing on Earth this month, but space debris-tracking experts say it’s too soon to determine exactly where the landing spot will be or if it poses any risks.
The craft, called Kosmos 482, was launched in 1972 with the intended destination of Venus. However, a rocket malfunction kept the probe inside of Earth’s orbit and it’s been stuck there, gradually decaying for more than 50 years.
Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek, with Delft University of Technology, told The Associated Press that while the mass of metal weighs about half a ton, it’s relatively small.
There’s a chance it will break up on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but even if it doesn’t, “the risk is similar to that of a random meteorite fall, several of which happen each year. You run a bigger risk of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime,” Langbroek said.
The chance of the spacecraft hitting someone or something “cannot be completely excluded.”
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Langbroek told Space.com that he pegs the current forecast for its re-entry for May 10, plus or minus a couple of days on either side. He estimates that Kosmos 482 will land with an impact velocity of approximately 242 km/h.
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New update of the #Kosmos 482 Descent Craft #reentry forecast based on new orbit update:
May 10 +/- 1.5 days.
Details in the updated blog post (link in next tweet) pic.twitter.com/C4as3Tmwjb— Dr Marco Langbroek (@Marco_Langbroek) May 5, 2025
After the craft was originally launched, most of it returned to Earth within a decade. Researchers believe the landing capsule — a spherical object about one metre in diameter — has been circling the world in a highly elliptical orbit for the past 53 years, gradually dropping in altitude.
In the 1970s, the highest point of the orbit was almost 10,000 kilometres above Earth’s surface, but now it’s below 400 kilometres and rapidly dropping.
There are concerns that after more than half a century in orbit, both the heat shield and parachute may be compromised or out of order.
A failure in the heat shield would be preferable, Jonathan McDowell with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told AP in an email, explaining that the spacecraft would burn up in its dive through the atmosphere.
If the heat shield holds, he said, “it’ll re-enter intact and you have a half-ton metal object falling from the sky.”
The spacecraft could re-enter anywhere between 51.7 degrees north and south latitude — as far north as Edmonton, Alta., and almost all the way down to South America’s Cape Horn. But since most of the planet is water, “chances are good it will indeed end up in some ocean,” Langbroek said.
