Space & Astronomy

Soviet satellite to crash down to Earth and nobody knows exactly where

By T.K. Randall
May 7, 2025 ·  1 comment

Where will Kosmos 482 land ? Image Credit: Pixabay / dilsadakcaoglu Something large will be falling from the sky between May 8th and May 12th, but nobody is quite sure exactly when it will happen or where it will come down.

The defunct Soviet satellite - Kosmos 482 - had originally been designed to fly to Venus.

Ultimately, however, it failed to escape low Earth orbit and has been stuck there ever since.

Now, 53 years later, it is expected to come crashing back down to terra firma, but there is some concern over the fact that nobody is quite sure exactly where it will land.It is also unclear whether it will break apart or crash to Earth in one large piece.

"As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact," wrote Netherlands-based satellite tracker Marco Langbroek.

As things stand, the projected landing area for the probe stretches both above and below the equator and includes parts of Europe, the UK and most of the United States.

That said, the odds of the satellite crashing into a populated area are still extremely remote.

Source: Gizmodo | Comments (1)

Tags: Satellite