1 week Ago
We’ve all heard of space debris that sometimes falls back to Earth. But the next hunk of space junk set to crash-land on our planet is a little bigger than just “debris.” A Kosmos 482 spacecraft, built by the former Soviet Union, has been doing circles around our planet for more than 50 years after its original mission to fly to Venus was cut short by an equipment malfunction in 1972, EarthSky reported.
It is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere sometime between May 8 and May 11. The issue? It was designed with a heat-resistant shield - which means it might hang together instead of disintegrating upon re-entry. And it weighs more than 1,000 pounds, the space website reported.
“Although the odds that it occurs over land or a populated area are small, the inconvenient detail with Kosmos 482 is that it was a probe similar to the Venera mission landers,” EarthSky reported . “That is, they were built to withstand acceleration and the high pressures and extreme heat of Venus. So most of the lander, even if not intact, may still reach our planet’s surface.
” We’ll watch for more details as this re-entry window gets closer. If the re-entry is visible overhead, it may look like the arc of a slow-moving meteor..
