In a rather ironic twist of fate, a defunct Soviet satellite, Kosmos 482, which has been lurking in Earth’s orbit for over fifty years, is poised to re-enter our atmosphere next week. This unsettling event has sparked concerns among space experts regarding its potential to crash down with catastrophic consequences.
The New York Post reported:
“The unit ‘might well survive Earth atmosphere entry and hit the ground,’ warned British-American astronomer Jonathan McDowell in a blog post. ‘In which case, I expect it’ll have the usual one-in-several-thousand chance of hitting someone’.
Originally launched in March 1972 by the USSR to collect data from the harsh environment of Venus, the Kosmos 482 probe suffered a catastrophic failure with one of its rocket boosters, leaving it stranded and spiraling aimlessly in orbit around Earth for decades.
Now, more than half a century later, this ‘ghost ship’ of the cosmos is expected to make its fiery descent sometime between May 7 and 13.
Marco Langbroek, a Dutch space expert who has been monitoring the spacecraft’s imminent return, speculated in a blog that the satellite might just crash through Earth’s atmosphere intact, given that it was engineered to withstand the extreme conditions of Venus’ surface.
Langbroek estimates that the wreckage could hit the ground at speeds exceeding 145 miles per hour upon impact.
While the craft is equipped with a parachute, the likelihood of it functioning correctly is slim, making the risk of injury akin to that of a meteorite strike.
“Fortunately, we don’t need to prepare for a cataclysmic event just yet,” Langbroek reassured, noting that “the risks involved are not particularly high, but they are not zero either.” McDowell echoed this sentiment, suggesting that the chances of being struck by this “dense but inert” piece of space debris are quite low, especially given that most regions of the Earth are sparsely populated.
“If you land something randomly on Earth, the odds of it hitting a person are about one in 10,000,” the expert informed the Daily Mail. “The odds of it hitting you specifically are even smaller, around one in 10 billion.”
Kosmos 482 could potentially crash anywhere between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude, a vast area that includes parts of Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Australia.
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