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.
eYou need to switch between fantasy realms. Who am I again? What do I do here? Who are all these people? It’s been a golden age for fantasy recently, and inhaling Dragon’s Dogma 2, Metaphor: Rifantagiothe seasons of Dragon House and all seasons of Rebecca Jaros are beginning to blur the details of one kingdom with another, less than a year later.
Avowed’s Fantasy Universe is ready-made from other Eternity Games pillars of developer Obsidian. The lore is dense, the in-game text is rich and the characters are redundant, but thankfully the land between them is fascinating to see the territory of Eora, full of political tensions and cool monsters. I remember valuable names and historical details, but I remember some of my experiences with this game – big enough for a crazy priest to build as a huge automaton inside The view from the rattle road hugging the walls of an underground cave and the secrets of the skin crawling I discovered in the basement of my fellow family homes. The appearance is annihilation and obliv with fungal and floral details that embroidery the structures and people you encounter, embroidering the ever-present tension between organic and rot.
The land in between is destroyed by a disturbing plague that angers people before it is consumed by mushroom-like growth. You, an envoy from the distant centre of the Empire, have been sent to investigate. You are like God, touched immortal, through this strange place, by the sacred voice in your head and the various native companions I felt truly enlightened. You will be guided. Avowed has many choices and self-direction, and it is a game that always respects your intelligence. The characters are interestingly written (densely) and there are many ways to respond to them. That’s far less than the Whedon-esque man/bad guy/joker reaction, as the cries echoes other games force you out of you.
I was hoping for a lively adventure of Obsidian sci-fi comedy The Outer Worlds for 20 hours, but readers, this is it’s not. This game is immeasurable. We spent some time in the opening area of Dawnshore and spent some old time familiarizing ourselves with spider-equipped caves (there are a lot of these, but this is not an Arachnophovictic game). Booty. (This is because I’m stagnant in the main quest, and I forgot about the important information that was displayed once in the text tutorial for about 5 seconds.) Only after 15 hours on this comfortable coastal land, I’d say I met one of my central antagonists. A memorable and terrifying warrior dressed in intricate armor and a mask with smoldering eyes. Then I found myself in a densely rotten jungle swamp filled with amazingly cheerful necromancers, and it big From Dawn Shore. When I arrived at my third new location about 30 hours later, I realized that there was no measure of this world at all.
Unfortunately, AVOWED is better It was 20 hours long. I’ve always been lost on strike from town and have come across something interesting like Skyrim and Fallout. However, there are two stickiness issues that suck fun over time. The first is common to many open world games. Once you arrive at a new location, all the quests and battles are a little difficult. After hours of quests, exploring weapons and armor, and upgrading, it hits a short sweet spot that all feels challenging but conquering. Then you start to feel like everything is too easy and empowering yourself, and it’s like a box-chic movement. This pattern repeatedly eroded my patience in the game.
The second problem is that the combat in Avowed is not as fun as it thinks. A lot of it. There are an impressive number of weapons and techniques, including Grimoire and Staff for spells, giant two-handed axes, bows and pistols, maces, shields, and more. But no matter what you choose, it feels inaccurate and boring, and the likelihood of success is determined by invisible numbers rather than skills. Make sure to take on enemies above your level, and how well you dodge the Great Sword path, or how cleverly you combine your magical effects to freeze undead skeletons. It hardly matters whether to grind it. The key is the quality of the gear. This should be continuously and painstakingly upgraded with random materials from warehouses that are found in every chest or lockbox. I was extremely tired of destroying R2 and firing magic projectiles, hacking tree monsters with my sword, and being so determined that I was missing from hit points. My companions either didn’t feel particularly useful in the fight.
All the diversity and textures in the fiction here are lacking in combat and loot. The end of the most interesting quests is home to unique swords and trinkets, but the fun of exploration is rarely found outside the scenery or characters. If you come across a powerful enemy, you may be losing your strength for the fight. If you find an appetizing, glowing breast in a cave, it can be filled with pennies, chunks of iron, and some fur.
Avowed began as Obsidian’s answer to Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series, reminding me of many oblivion and Skyrim in an exciting moment when I tripped over something unexpected in the wild. But it also shares a tendency to repeat those games and a sense of weightlessness in their fight. My first 15 or so hours on the land felt potentially rich, but I was tired of it long before the end.
Webcam images show asteroid burning up in the atmosphere over Siberia
Lensk LR/YouTube
Astronomers discovered the asteroid, about 70 centimeters in diameter, hours before it exploded harmlessly into the atmosphere above Siberia.
european space agency (ESA) issued an alert at 9:27 a.m. GMT, warning that space rocks could illuminate the skies over northern Siberia at around 11:15 p.m. local time (4:15 p.m. GMT).
Speaking before the event, Alan Fitzsimmons from Britain’s Queen’s University Belfast says objects of this size pose no danger to people on the ground, but early warnings are a positive sign that our ability to detect these objects before they hit Earth is increasing.
“It’s small, but it’s still going to be pretty spectacular,” Fitzsimmons said. “The sky above the impact site will darken and a very impressive, very bright fireball will spread across the sky for hundreds of kilometers around it.”
Several objects of this size collide with Earth every year, and we are getting better at detecting them early. The first discovery was in 2008. The next discovery was made six years later, but the pace of observations has picked up. Today’s asteroid, named C0WEPC5, is the fourth predicted to hit Earth this year.
Early warning of small asteroids gives astronomers the opportunity to observe them, collect data, and even try to collect any small pieces that survive. Fitzsimmons said the first such predicted impact in 2008 led to the recovery of a small piece of rock and generated important science. “What was beautiful was that the meteorite’s reflectivity matched exactly what was measured by telescopes before the impact, and it was a perfect match between what we saw in space and what we later found on Earth. It shows a very nice direct connection,” he says.
Detecting larger, more dangerous objects heading toward Earth could provide an opportunity to deflect them or at least evacuate the dangerous area.
A map showing where the asteroid is predicted to hit Siberia’s atmosphere.
ESA
NASA and ESA currently have dedicated programs for asteroid discovery and tracking. This involves a large network of dedicated observatories and amateur astronomers who read the positions of known objects so that their orbits can be better understood and predicted.
This latest asteroid was discovered by NASA’s Asteroid Earth Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). ATLAS operates four telescopes around the world and is designed to provide up to a week of collision warning.
“This is a victory for science, If you happen to be in Siberia this evening, there will definitely be something to take your mind off the very cold temperatures,” says Fitzsimmons.
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