Opinion Soviet-era spacecraft, launched 50 years ago, to crash back to Earth: Should you be worried?

Most parts of the mission, launched on March 31, 1972, came back to Earth within 10 years of liftoff. Only one section, weighing around 500 kg, ended up stuck in space, and was steadily falling towards Earth.

Experts are yet to determine exactly when and where the piece will fall.

What was the Kosmos 482 mission?

The mission was part of a series of probes that the erstwhile Soviet Union launched during the Cold War to explore Venus. The planet was a subject of interest for two reasons. One, the thick clouds of Venus were believed to be hiding life on the surface. Two, the Soviets wanted to demonstrate their scientific superiority by sending probes to a far-off planet.

Under the Venera Program (named after the Russian word for Venus), the country sent 28 spacecraft to Venus between 1961 and 1984. Thirteen probes successfully entered the Venusian atmosphere, and 10 of those landed on the planet. However, they could only survive for between 23 minutes and two hours due to extreme conditions on Venus.

The Kosmos 482’s liftoff came just days after the launch of its twin, Venera 8, on March 27, 1972, which landed on Venus 117 days later. The Kosmos 482 consisted of various instruments to measure the temperature, pressure, wind speed, visibility, atmospheric gases and rock composition, and radio the results back to Earth.

What went wrong with Kosmos 482?

Soon after Kosmos 482’s launch, a malfunction took place in the rocket. “The upper rocket stage that was meant to propel the Kosmos 482 bus out of Earth orbit shut off too early because the timer wasn’t set correctly,” according to a report in The Conversation.

As a result, the spacecraft was left stranded in an orbit around the Earth. Subsequently, the lander module, which was supposed to land on Venus, broke apart from the main spacecraft. While the lander module kept orbiting the Earth, the main spacecraft, which was large and heavy, burned up in the (Earth’s) atmosphere.

Now, the lander module is being dragged by the atmosphere towards Earth with a possible re-entry around May 10.

Is this a cause for worry?

No one knows where the lander module will crash on Earth. That is because its re-entry will be uncontrolled. After being in space for 53 years, the spacecraft does not have any capacity to aerobrake or a working parachute to slow it down, and the refrigeration to keep it cool.

The part, which is hurtling through space at more than 17,000 miles an hour, will only be slowed down by atmospheric friction.

It is unlikely that the spacecraft would burn up in the atmosphere. It has a body made of titanium, whose melting point is 1,700 degrees Celsius. Typically, when space junk re-enters the atmosphere, its temperatures can reach up to 1,600 degrees Celsius.

What experts know is that the lander’s orbit places it between 52 degrees north latitude and 52 degrees south latitude, which covers Africa, Australia, most of the Americas and much of south- and mid-latitude Europe and Asia, according to a report by The New York Times.

Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that tracks objects in orbit, told the newspaper that there were three possibilities after the spacecraft’s re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

“A splash, a thud or an ouch… A splash is really good,” he said, adding that the hope was to avoid the “thud” or the “ouch.” If the spacecraft remains intact after the re-entry, it will crash at 242 kmph, similar to that of a high-speed train or a very fast race car.

Note that the possibility of someone or something being hit by this spacecraft, which is small in size, is quite low. “You run a bigger risk of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime,” Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek told The Guardian.