POLAND: On the night of May 9-10, the COSMOS 482 probe may enter the atmosphere

The Soviet COSMOS 482 probe, launched into space in 1972, will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere after 53 years. The entire object or its fragments may reach the Earth's surface. The probe is expected to enter the Earth's atmosphere on the night of May 9-10, POLSA informed PAP on Wednesday.

As reported by the Polish Space Agency in a press release, due to its specific structure resulting from its original purpose (a lander in a mission to Venus), the probe will probably not be completely destroyed upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

"The entire object or its fragments may reach the Earth's surface. Based on preliminary calculations of the object's orbit, the moment of entry into the Earth's atmosphere is predicted for the night of 9 to 10 May 2025, with an uncertainty window currently estimated at about 13-17 hours," POLSA reported.

As POLSA spokeswoman Agnieszka Gapys explained, the scope of the uncertainty window "results from the use of various computational models and input information to predict the object's flight trajectory."

"The estimates allow for the object to fly over Poland," the spokeswoman stressed.

She added that it should be noted that the orbit is currently changing dynamically. "POLSA has been monitoring this object for 2 weeks and will provide ongoing information on changes in predictions," we read.

Marco Langbroek of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands predicts that the craft could be moving at speeds of up to 242 km/h just before it makes contact with Earth. The object is relatively small, and even if it doesn't break apart, the probability of it hitting someone or something "is about the same as a meteorite impact, which happens a few times a year."

The USSR launched COSMOS 482 in 1972 as part of a mission to Venus, but due to a failure, the spacecraft never reached the planet. Since then, the probe has been orbiting the Earth, gradually decreasing in altitude - from an initial 9,800 km to the current 370 km.

The probe is expected to survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere because it was built to withstand flight through Venus' carbon dioxide-dense atmosphere.

Under international law, Russia – as the legal successor to the Soviet Union – remains the owner and responsible party for COSMOS 482, in accordance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. (PAP)

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