Soviet Cosmos 482 Spacecraft Collides with Unknown Locations on Earth

The Soviet spacecraft, which was launched on a failed mission to Venus in 1972, is thought to have crashed to Earth early Saturday morning.

The European Space Agency monitored the craft’s uncontrolled descent and reported that it was last tracked by German radar. By the time of the anticipated crash, radar could no longer locate Cosmos 482, concluding that “it is likely that re-entry has already occurred.”

No injuries have been reported.

Cosmos 482 was part of the Soviet Venera Program, a series of probes designed to study Venus. While ten of these missions successfully landed on the harsh planet, the rocket carrying Cosmos 482 malfunctioned, leaving its upper stage, including the descent module, trapped in Earth’s orbit.

For the next 53 years, the approximately 3-foot-wide, 1,069-pound spacecraft orbited Earth in a smaller, elliptical path until it was close enough to descend into the atmosphere.

It’s common for space debris to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. The ESA reports that over 2,400 human-made objects fell from space in 2022. Most burned up upon re-entry, with the majority not landing in the ocean.

However, Cosmos 482 was engineered to withstand the dense atmosphere of Venus and operate on a planet with an average temperature of 867 degrees Fahrenheit (464°C). This design means it was theoretically robust enough to endure a routine re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.

There are no recorded instances of space debris causing human fatalities. An ESA official stated in a blog post about Cosmos-482, “The risk of a satellite re-entering and causing injury is exceedingly low. The annual chance of an individual being harmed by orbital debris is less than one in 100 billion. By comparison, a person is approximately 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning.”

On Friday, U.S. space forces estimated that the spacecraft would re-enter the atmosphere at 1:52 AM on Saturday over the Pacific Ocean, west of Guam.