One Da spacecraft was Sovietdesigned to make a soft landing in Venus – but which remained stuck in the orbit of the earth for decades -, fell from the sky at dawn on Saturday (10)according to the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos.
The cylinder -shaped ship, about 1 meter in diameter, entered the dense layers of the atmosphere around 9:24 am Moscow time (3:24 am, GMT), falling in the Indian Ocean, west of Jacarta, Indonesia, according to information from the Russian agency.
The object is believed to be the capsule Cosmos 482 – or Kosmos 482 -, launched by the Soviet Union in March 1972which failed on their way to a transfer orbit that would take her to Venus to study her environment.
In the following decades, the object circulated the earth aimlessly, being. Astronomers and space traffic specialists have observed the object for years, as its orbital trajectory reaches increasingly smaller altitudes, resulting from the subtle atmospheric drag that exists even hundreds of kilometers from Earth.
Experts told CNN that this specific piece of did not pose a substantial risk to people on land. But it attracted international attention due to the unique history of Cosmos 482.
“This object is designed to survive the entrance to Venus, so there is a good chance that it survives around the whole earth,” said Marlon Sorge, a specialist in Aerospace Corporation’s space debris on Monday. “This, in fact, makes the risk less … because it would remain intact.”
Surviving reentry on earth
Often, when it is thrown back to Earth, objects such as deactivated rockets are shattered by shocking physics, as they can collide with the thick inner atmosphere of the earth while still traveling at more than 27,000 kilometers per hour.
Each of the parts of the rocket can then represent a threat to the area where it lands.
But Cosmos 482 is exceptionally suitable for traveling back home. The spacecraft has a substantial thermal shield that protects the vehicle from temperatures and intense pressures that can accumulate during reentry.
And as Cosmos 482 is designed to reach the surface of Venus – where the atmosphere is 90 times denser than that of the earth – the probably will reach the ground intact.
The Soviet Program worships
The Soviet Union Space Research Institute, or Iki, has executed an innovative program in the midst of the 20th century space race.
Venera, as the program was called, sent a series of probes towards Venus in the 1970s and 1980s, with several spacecraft surviving the trip and transmitting data back to Earth before the operations ceased.
Of the two Venera vehicles that were launched in 1972, however, only one arrived in Venus.
The other, one spacecraft sometimes cataloged as V-71 No. 671, no. And that is why researchers believe that the object that space traffic experts are tracking is the cosmos 482 (from the 1960s, the Soviet vehicles left in the Earth’s orbit were named Cosmos and a numerical designation for tracking purposes, according to NASA.)
What to do if you see spatial debris
Although a landing on dry soil was unlikely, it is not impossible. The trajectory of the Cosmos 482 object showed that it could reach anywhere within a wide range of land that includes “all of Africa, South America, Australia, USA, parts of Canada, parts of Europe and parts of Asia,” said Marco Langbroek, professor and space traffic specialist at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands.
Sorge emphasized that if Cosmos 482 hit the ground after its final descent tonight, the observers would be advised to maintain a distance. The aged spaceship may leak dangerous fuels or pose other risks to people and properties.
“Contact the authorities,” said Sorge. “Please don’t move with that.”
Legally speaking, the object also belongs to Russia. According to the rules mapped in the 1967 outer space treaty – which remains the main document that sustains international law on the subject – the nation that has launched an object to space maintains property and responsibility for it, even if it falls back to land decades after launch.
The General Panorama
Although inoperative objects forgotten in space routinely come out of orbit, most fragments are completely disintegrated during the process of reentry on Earth.
But the world is, with commercial companies like Spacex launching hundreds of new orbit satellites each year. This explosion of activity has generated alarms in the space traffic community, as experts seek to ensure that objects do not collide in space or represent a risk for humans if they make an uncontrolled descent back home.
Security patterns have improved dramatically since the 20th century space race, when the Soviet Venus probe was launched, noted Parker Wishik, spokesman for The Aerospace Corporation.
Still, incidents like the Cosmos 482 impact event are a striking reminder.
“Everything that goes up has to go down,” said Wishik. “What you put in space today can affect us in the coming decades.”
