Soviet spaceships will probably fall on earth this week

Part of a spacecraft in the Soviet era should crash on earth this week after being stuck in orbit for more than half a century.

Kosmos 482 was launched in 1972 as part of a mission to Venus, but it never escaped the low terrestrial orbit and separated into four pieces, according to NASA.

One of these pieces, supposed to be the Lander probe, should reintegrate our atmosphere around May 10 and at least a game could survive the trip without burning, according to NASA.

There are many things that we do not know about the start of the school year, including where it could land, but even if one of it survives, 70% of the planet is covered by the sea, it is therefore unlikely that it causes significant damage.

“It is much more likely for you to gain from the lottery than you are touched by this piece of space debris.” said Stijn Lemmens, principal analyst of space debris at the European Space Agency.

The Landder capsule is a hard spherical object and a meter wide and weighs almost half a-tonne.

It was built to survive extreme heat and pressure from the atmosphere of Venus, which means that it has a robust thermal shield and a lasting structure.

This is why experts think that he could survive an uncontrolled descent through the atmosphere of the earth.

The parachute system, initially intended to slow down the descent from landing to Venus, is probably degraded for a long time after more than 50 years in space.

The risk for people on the ground is considered low, but the projected flight trajectory of the capsule could see it land between 51.7 ° north and south of latitude, covering most of the inhabited world.

This means that it could potentially land as far north as London as southern as the southern tip of South America.

Uncontrolled space debris incidents have already occurred.

Mr. Lemmens explained that the “reintegration of human manufacturing objects in the earth's atmosphere occurs quite frequently”, occurring each week for larger and daily spacecrafts for the little ones. Objects generally burn in the earth's atmosphere before reaching the ground.

Booster of March 5 of China returned to the Indian Ocean in 2022 and the Tiangong-1 space station Mainly burned on the Pacific in 2018.

Kosmos 482 is now closely followed by international space agencies.

Lemmens said that future spacecrafts “should be designed so that they can withdraw from the orbit safely, preferably by making controlled turned on.”

This allows precise predictions of landing places, reducing the risk of any debris having an impact on populated areas, thus protecting people and goods while “managing the environmental impact of space debris”.