Kosmos 482's Final Descent Captured in One Haunting Image
NEWS | 16 May 2025
More than 50 years ago in the early 1960s, the Soviet space program embarked on a bold new undertaking to go where no human had gone before. The Venera mission to explore Earth's nearest orbital neighbor, Venus, is to date the only mission to have successfully landed spacecraft on the deeply inhospitable planet. But, of the 29 probes dispatched on the Venera mission, only 16 landed on or orbited the nearby world. Most of the remainder got temporarily stuck in Earth orbit, falling back to the surface in the same year they were launched. One probe, renamed Kosmos 482, took a little more time to return. Launched in March 1972, it spent just over 53 years stuck looping through space before finally plunging through our atmosphere on 10 May 2025 in an uncontrolled reentry that captured the global imagination. Now, images captured by a German radar station present what is likely to be the last time we'll ever see the failed probe. On 10 May 2025, the Cosmos-482 descent craft reentered Earth's atmosphere after 53 years in orbit. It was designed to land on Venus, but it never escaped Earth’s gravity. Image credit: @Fraunhofer_FHR pic.twitter.com/JKas0uMSP5 — ESA Operations (@esaoperations) May 13, 2025 The data, captured by Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR on 8 May 2025, shows the tumbling roll of Kosmos 482 as it falls through space. As for where it ended up, that is currently unknown and is likely to remain unknown, unless more data becomes available. "The Soviet-era object was last spotted over Germany at 08:04 CEST on 10 May by our colleagues at Fraunhofer FHR as it passed through the sky over their antenna. Because the descent craft was not spotted one orbit later, at the expected 09:32 CEST pass, the reentry can be assumed to have occurred between these two times," the European Space Agency explained on its tracking blog for the object. "A precise time and location of its reentry have so far not been identified. We have not received any reports on direct visual observations of the final reentry or of any impacts on ground." Currently, based on extremely detailed modeling, the best estimate for where it fell is somewhere in the Indian Ocean. This is probably for the best. frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen> The conditions on Venus are perhaps most aptly described as hellacious. Surface temperatures average around 464 degrees Celsius (867 Fahrenheit), and atmospheric pressure is about 92 times higher than the atmospheric pressure at sea level here on Earth. Oh, and it rains sulfuric acid (which evaporates before it hits the ground, but any descending spacecraft still needs to get through the atmosphere). All this to say that the Venera probes were built to be extremely sturdy, and scientists thought it likely that Kosmos 482 would at least partially survive the searing heat of reentry to hit the ground intact or in chunks. No one wants a Venus lander raining on their heads. frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen> There is, unfortunately, still a lot of defunct junk circling our planet. Once the scope of the problem started to emerge, space agencies began to push a spacecraft design philosophy called Design for Demise. It is what it sounds like: objects sent into Earth orbit should be designed in such a way that they will harmlessly burn up on reentry. However, not all manufacturers have adopted this approach, and we're still sending spacecraft into Earth orbit faster than they can come down. In addition, even spacecraft that are designed to burn up can release ozone-depleting chemicals into Earth's atmosphere. Humanity has been treating low-Earth orbital space with reckless abandon. We were relatively lucky that the descent of Kosmos 482 caused no known problems, but it's a sobering reminder that even space, for us, is not limitless.
Author: Michelle Starr.
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