After more than 50 years spent orbiting the Soviet satellite around the earth, Kosmos 482 He will return to the planet between 7 and 13 May, but his fall could generate problems. Some of its components, in fact, may not disintegrate during his return to the atmosphere and could hit the surface.
Launched in 1972 as part of the Venera mission, the satellite was built to endure the infernal temperatures of the second planet of the Solar System. At the time, although managing to reach the Earth’s orbit, he did not leave for his journey due to a malfunction of the engine and was blocked. According to the expert Marco Langbroek of the University of Delft, in the Netherlands, the Kosmos 482 could resist the intense heat of the return to the earth.
“The risks are not particularly high, but not even null,” he explained, as reported by Corriere della Sera. “With a mass of just less than 500 kilograms and a diameter of one meter, the dangers are similar to those of the impact of a meteorite“. According to Langbroek, the impact speed will be equal to 242 kilometers per hour and at the moment it cannot be said with certainty when or where the fall will take place.
The trajectory of the return covers a very large area Between the 52nd north parallel and the 52nd south parallel: it includes most of the emerged and ocean expanse lands, therefore it is very likely that the satellite falls into the water without causing damage. The uncertainty, however, will remain up to the last moments.
Kosmos 482 is only the last of a long series of space objects that, after a more or less long time, return to Earth. In 2018 it was the turn of the Chinese space station Tiangong-1while in 2022 the booster has always been created in the People’s Republic. In both cases, the crash took place in the Pacific. The interest in these wrecks is very high, since they can provide useful information to improve space technologies.
An emblematic case is the US satellite Vanguard 1just 15 centimeters big and the first to be fed by solar panels. It has been in an orbit for 67 years and scientists would like to recover it in order to analyze the damage accumulated by the impact of micrometorites and the battery conditions.