Soviet Venus probe crashed into the ocean, according to Russian space agency
A Soviet space probe that has been orbiting the earth for more than 50 years crashed uncontrollably into the ocean on Saturday, according to reports from Russia
(Image: muratart/Shutterstock.com)
More than 50 years after its failed launch towards Venus, the Soviet space probe Kosmos 482 has crashed back to Earth, plunging into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta. This was made public by the Russian space agency via its official Telegram account. It entered the Earth's atmosphere at 8:24 a.m. and fell into the sea shortly afterwards. Roskosmos did not provide any information on possible damage, and it is also unclear whether the probe broke up or not. The ESA also assumes that the probe crashed; otherwise it would have reappeared over Germany at 9:32 a.m., but this did not happen.
Kosmos 482 is the central part of a Soviet Venus probe that was launched on March 31, 1972 with the destination Venus. However, due to a malfunction in the upper stage of its rocket, it never left Earth's orbit and instead orbited our planet in a high elliptical orbit. In this orbit, it came closer and closer to Earth until the crash became inevitable. Because there had been no connection to the probe for decades, the crash was completely uncontrolled and could theoretically have hit land. Because the Earth is largely covered by water, a crash over an ocean was the most likely scenario, and that is precisely what happened.
Videos by heise
The capsule had a mass of 495 kilograms and a diameter of around one meter. It was fitted with a heat shield for the planned landing on Venus. It was therefore possible that it would survive the crash through the Earth's atmosphere. However, it was unknown how badly this protective shield had been damaged by ageing processes over the past 50 years. Between 1961 and 1983, the Soviet Union sent several space probes to Venus as part of the Verena program to explore the planet. Numerous of these probes also landed there and sent information back to Earth.
Although uncontrolled crashes of larger objects such as that of Kosmos 482 are not frequent, they do happen again and again. Just a year ago, a discarded large battery pallet from the International Space Station (ISS) crashed to earth, with a fragment damaging a house in the US state of Florida. The Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK), among others, had warned in advance that a fall on Germany could not be ruled out. Due to the high speeds of such objects, it is usually not even possible to estimate which part of the world they will fall onto until shortly before entering the atmosphere.
(mho)
