Astrophotographer Ralf Vandenbergh has published images showing Cosmos 482. This designation hides a Soviet station for the study of Venus, which remained in Earth orbit due to an accident. It will fall to Earth in the next few days.
Space race relic
“Cosmos-482” was one of a pair of probes launched by the USSR in 1972 to study Venus. The first vehicle successfully left the vicinity of our planet and subsequently made a successful landing on the second planet from the Sun. In the official historiography, this mission entered under the designation “Venera-8”.
Its twin brother was far less successful. Due to an upper stage accident, it broke up into several fragments. The largest of them remained in an elongated Earth orbit with parameters 205 by 9,805 kilometers and an inclination of 52 degrees. As was common in the USSR, the failure was not publicized. The spacecraft received the faceless designation “Cosmos-482”.
All the following years the height of Cosmos-482 gradually decreased. As of April 29, the orbital parameters of the vehicle were 153 by 369 km. According to experts’ calculations, it will enter the Earth’s atmosphere in the next few days. This may happen on May 9-10.
Images of Cosmos-482
Cosmos-482’s dramatic drop in altitude allowed astrophotographer Ralf Vandenbergh to obtain images of it. They show a round object, presumably a descent capsule that was supposed to land on Venus. It has a diameter of 1 meter and a mass of about 500 kg. For comparison and better understanding of the scale, Vandenbergh added images of Starlink satellites to the images.
The Cosmos-482 capsule is equipped with a heat shield. This means that it is very likely that it will be able to withstand re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. As Cosmos-482 passes the perigee of its orbit over the Northern Hemisphere, this increases the likelihood that the capsule will fall exactly on land. According to experts’ calculations, if it does not collapse in the atmosphere, the final speed of its fall will be about 65-70 meters per second (~242 km/h). The probability that the fall of Cosmos 482 will cause destruction or casualties is very low — but still, not zero.
The upcoming event can be viewed from two perspectives. On the one hand, the relic of the space race era, which spent more than half a century in space and then returned to Earth, is of considerable interest to scientists and historians. On the other hand, the fall of Cosmos 482 is a reminder once again of the dangers posed by space debris and the impact it has on our planet.
