The once-disbanded Soviet spacecraft is expected to land on Earth this month in an uncontrolled crash, but experts in space debris tracking say it is too early to determine exactly where the landing site is or whether it poses any risks.
The process, called Kosmos 482, was launched in 1972 with Venus's scheduled destination. However, the rocket failure kept the probe inside the Earth's orbit there and got stuck there, gradually rotting for more than 50 years.
Dutch scientists Marco Langbroek and the University of Treechnolable told the Associated Press that although the mass of the metal is about half a ton, it is relatively small.
Even if not, its risk is similar to random meteorite falls, Langbroek said, with several of the risks occurring each year similar to random meteorite falls.
The chance of a spacecraft hitting someone or something “can’t be completely rejected”.
Langbroek told Space.com that he will re-enter the current forecast on May 10 and will be subtracting or subtracting for the other few days. He estimated that the impact speed of Kosmos 482 was about 242 km/h.
After the initial launch of the spacecraft, most of them returned to Earth within ten years. The researchers believe that over the past 53 years, the landing capsule – a spherical object with a diameter of about 1 meter has been hovering over a highly elliptical orbit, gradually descending.
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In the 1970s, the highest point of the orbit was nearly 10,000 kilometers higher than the Earth's surface, but now it is below 400 kilometers, falling rapidly.
There are concerns that both heat shields and parachutes may be damaged or failed after more than half a century in the first half of the track.
Jonathan McDowell and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told the Associated Press in an email that spacecraft would burn in the atmosphere, which would be the most desirable.
If the heat shield is fixed, it will be re-entered in full and you will have a half ton of metal object falling from the sky, he said. ”
The spacecraft can re-enter between 51.7 degrees north latitude – north to Edmonton, extending almost all the way to the cape of South America. But since most of the earth is water, “the chance is good and it does end up going into some oceans,” Lambrock said.
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