For over fifty years, the ill-fated Soviet satellite Kosmos 482 has been a ghostly presence in Earth’s orbit, its original mission to Venus thwarted by a rocket malfunction. Now, the relic of space exploration is preparing for its dramatic return, with 1,100 pounds of metal and circuitry expected to re-enter our atmosphere between May 9 and May 13.
An astronomer has managed to pinpoint a rough estimate of where this piece of history might land, and it seems the most densely populated cities on the planet are squarely within its trajectory.
As reported by the Daily Mail:
“Dr. Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker and astronomer at Delft University of Technology, anticipates that the satellite will make landfall somewhere between latitude 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south.”
“If it lands in a populated area, the potential for a dangerous encounter is troubling,” Dr. Langbroek cautions.
Kosmos 482 was launched in 1972 with high hopes of shedding light on Venus, but a catastrophic engine failure left it stranded in low Earth orbit, a soulless satellite drifting through the cosmos.
“Current scientific assessments suggest that the object speeding towards Earth at a staggering 17,000 miles per hour is the final piece of the probe—the landing module, which has been missing for decades,” a statement reveals.
The forecasted landing zones encompass nearly all of Earth’s urban centers, placing every major city within a perilous zone.
“While the exact timing of the re-entry remains uncertain, most estimates suggest May 10 or the early hours of May 11,” Dr. Langbroek notes. “The risks involved are not particularly high, but they are not zero either.”
There is a reasonable likelihood that the probe will ultimately splash down in one of the world’s oceans.
“Dr. Jonathan McDowell, an esteemed astronomer, explains: ‘If an object falls randomly to Earth, the probability of it hitting a person is approximately one in 10,000. Hence, the likelihood of it hitting you specifically is about one in 10 billion—considerably smaller than that,’” he elaborates.
Further Reading:
DANGER FROM SPACE: Old Soviet Satellite Kosmos 482 Set To Fall Back to Earth Next Week, Raising Fears It May Cause Deadly Strike on Our Planet’s Surface
