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After more than five decades of silent orbit around Earth, a relic of the Cold War space race is expected to make a dramatic return to our planet this week. Kosmos 482, part of a failed Soviet mission to Venus launched in 1972, is set to re-enter Earth's atmosphere around May 10, according to NASA and other space agencies monitoring its trajectory.
The spacecraft, which separated into four pieces shortly after launch, failed to break free from Earth's gravity and has remained circling the globe ever since. One of its pieces, believed to be the lander probe, is causing concern among space experts due to its potential to survive re-entry. Built to withstand the extreme conditions of Venus's atmosphere, the capsule is a nearly one-meter-wide sphere weighing almost half a tonne. Its robust construction and heat shield—designed to handle much greater pressure and temperature than Earth's atmosphere—make it one of the few pieces of space junk with a chance of surviving the fiery plunge back to Earth.
Despite the drama of a Soviet spacecraft returning to Earth after more than 50 years, experts say the risk to human life is negligible. "It's much more likely that you win the lottery than that you get impacted by this piece of space debris," said Stijn Lemmens, Senior Space Debris Mitigation Analyst at the European Space Agency. With 70% of the planet covered in water and most of the rest sparsely populated, the chances of the capsule hitting a populated area are slim.
Still, the spacecraft's re-entry path—spanning latitudes between 51.7° north and south—covers a significant portion of the inhabited world. From London in the north to the southern tip of South America, the potential landing zone is vast, prompting global tracking efforts.
Kosmos 482 is not the first large object to make an uncontrolled descent. China's Long March 5B booster fell into the Indian Ocean in 2022, and the Tiangong-1 space station burned up over the Pacific in 2018. These incidents highlight a growing issue in space exploration: the long-term consequences of leaving large, human-made objects in orbit without plans for safe deorbiting.
Controlled re-entries allow for accurate predictions of debris fall zones, significantly reducing the risk to populated areas and helping mitigate the environmental hazards posed by space debris. Until then, Earth must keep an eye on its skies—just in case another Soviet ghost decides to come crashing home.
