A Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land on Venus in the 1970s is expected to soon plunge uncontrolled back to Earth.
It's too early to know where the half-ton mass of metal might come down or how much of it will survive re-entry, according to space debris-tracking experts.
Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek predicts the failed spacecraft will re-enter about 10 May. He estimates it will come crashing in at 150mph (242km/h), if it remains intact.
"While not without risk, we should not be too worried," Langbroek said in an email.
[...] Most of it came tumbling down within a decade. But Langbroek and others believe the landing capsule itself — a spherical object about 3ft (1 metre) in diameter — has been circling the world in a highly elliptical orbit for the past 53 years, gradually dropping in altitude.
It's quite possible that the 1,000lb-plus (nearly 500kg) spacecraft will survive re-entry. It was built to withstand a descent through the carbon dioxide-thick atmosphere of Venus, said Langbroek of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Experts doubt the parachute system would work after so many years. The heat shield may also be compromised after so long in orbit.
It would be better if the heat shield fails, which would cause the spacecraft to burn up during its dive through the atmosphere, Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in an email. But if the heat shield holds, "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, or as far north as London and Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, 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.
In 2022, a Chinese booster rocket made an uncontrolled return to Earth and in 2018 the Tiangong-1 space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere over the south Pacific after an uncontrolled re-entry.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 06, @12:50PM (2 children)
Well, with the luck i've been having lately, it was nice knowing all you'se!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 06, @08:15PM (1 child)
But maybe you're due for a rebalancing of the universe, so it will land somewhere useful, like, say, the data center where the biggest debts you owe are stored, with another piece taking out wherever the backup is stored.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 09, @01:46PM
What are these backups you're talking about? Sure, sure, everyone has one or three. Then again maybe that one got outsourced.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 06, @01:34PM (1 child)
According to, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482 [wikipedia.org] the first bits that came back landed in New Zealand--a pretty small "target" as these things go...
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Tuesday May 06, @07:02PM
That was in 1972.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Username on Tuesday May 06, @01:48PM
If everything works and it lands softly in the middle of red square.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday May 06, @02:08PM (4 children)
n/t
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 06, @03:29PM (3 children)
How much radioactive power supply elements are it carrying?
The only way to stop a bad guy with a can opener is a good guy with a can opener.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 06, @06:29PM (2 children)
I was wondering that to. I can't find anything about the propulsion or power source. I guess since they are not to worried it's "safe".
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday May 06, @10:45PM
Hopefully not another https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 07, @03:33PM
Venus probes need less heating than you'd think, I guess. If its like Venera 8 the lifespan after landing would have been about 50 minutes so its half century old batteries.
You get used to the American style of the engineering data turned into PDFs and being on archive.org along with also being on NASA-adjacent pages, but there's not much data out there about old Russian space hardware.
Somewhat contemporary Apollo batteries were silver-zinc so whomever it lands on might sell it for scrap?
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday May 06, @05:38PM (1 child)
that it smashes into the White House or Mar-a-Lago, it's worth the risk.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 06, @07:01PM
Kremlin also a good place for it to end up...back where it came from.
(Score: 0, Troll) by zenlessyank on Tuesday May 06, @06:12PM (1 child)
Or maybe 40 of them. Duck and cover, motherfuckers!!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 09, @01:48PM
I hope and pray the world never sees a nuclear war.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"