Extract from ABC News
Kosmos 482 may look similar to the earlier Venera probe, a replica of which appears at the Memorial Museum of Astronautics in Moscow. (Wikimedia Commons: Armael/CC0 1.0)
In short:
Russia's space agency says the Kosmos 482 lander has made an uncontrolled re-entry to Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
The half-tonne Soviet vehicle malfunctioned after its launch in 1972 and never made it out of Earth's orbit for the next 53 years.
What's next?
Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty.
A Soviet-era spacecraft has plunged to Earth, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.
Russia's space agency said it believed the Kosmos 482 lander made an uncontrolled re-entry over the Indian Ocean, while European and US agencies were unsure just where it ended up.
The European Space Agency’s space debris office also tracked the spacecraft's doom after it failed to appear over a German radar station.
Encased in titanium, the craft was built to withstand the oppressive 460 degree Celcius heat of Venus, raising concerns it would not burn up upon re-entry.
The orbit of Kosmos 482 has been deteriorating since its failed launch in 1972. (ABC Science/NASA)
The half-tonne vehicle malfunctioned after its launch in 1972 and never made it out of Earth's orbit for the next 53 years.
The craft circled the Earth in an ever-smaller and irregular pattern until Saturday's re-entry.
Space scientists said Kosmos 482 posed a small threat, and that a person was about 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning.
Malfunction spoiled mission to Venus
It was not immediately known how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit.
Launched in 1972 by the Soviet Union, Kosmos 482 was part of a series of missions bound for Venus.
But this one never made it out of orbit around Earth, stranded there by a rocket malfunction.
Kosmos 482 may look a bit like this when it lands back on Earth. (Supplied: NASA)
Much of the spacecraft came tumbling back to Earth within a decade of the failed launch.
No longer able to resist gravity's tug as its orbit dwindled, the spherical lander — an estimated 1-metre across and weighing half a tonne — was the last part of the spacecraft to come down.
Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty.
After following the spacecraft's downward spiral, scientists, military experts and others could not pinpoint in advance precisely when or where the spacecraft might come down.
Solar activity added to the uncertainty as well as the spacecraft's deteriorating condition after so long in space.
An unknown grave
After so much anticipation, some observers were disappointed by the lingering uncertainty over the exact whereabouts of the spacecraft's grave.
"If it was over the Indian Ocean, only the whales saw it," Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek said via X.
As of Saturday afternoon, the US Space Command had yet to confirm the spacecraft's demise as it collected and analysed data from orbit.
The US Space Command routinely monitors dozens of re-entries each month.
What set Kosmos 482 apart — and earned it extra attention from government and private space trackers — was that it was more likely to survive re-entry, according to officials.
It was also coming in uncontrolled, without any intervention by flight controllers who normally target the Pacific and other vast expanses of water for old satellites and other space debris.
ABC/wires
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