What about Kosmos-482, a Soviet spacecraft that returns to Earth after 53 years

A robot -like Soviet spacecraft has been on drift in space for 53 years. It will return to earth later this week.

Kosmos-482 was launched in March 1972. If everything had gone well, it would have landed on the sizzling surface of Venus and the ninth of the Soviet Vena missions will be to the planet. Instead, rocket disorders left it stranded in the earth. Kosmos-482 has slowly cut back to our world since then.

“It is this artifact intended to go to Venus 50 years ago and was lost and forgotten for half a century,” said Jonathan McDowellAn astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that maintains A public catalog of objects in space. “And now it is going to get its moment in atmospheric access – albeit on the wrong planet.”

Colored in a protective heat shield, the spacecraft, with a weight of around 1,050 pounds, was designed to survive his dive through the poisonous Venusian atmosphere. This means that there is a good chance that it will survive his dive through this and at least partially get to the surface intact.

Yet the risk of injuries on the ground is low.

“I’m not worried – I don’t tell all my friends to go to the basement for this,” said Darren McknightSenior technical fellow at LeolabsA company that follows objects in a job around the earth and monitors cosmos-482 six times a day. “We usually have a large object about once a week in the atmosphere of the earth where some remains of it will survive to the ground.”

When will Kosmos-482 return to Earth?

Estimates change daily, but the predicted days of re -entry are currently Friday or Saturday. The New York Times will offer updated estimates as soon as they are revised.

A Calculation of the window Due to the Aerospace Corporation, a federally supported non -profit that follows space waste, 12:42 pm Eastern Time on May 10, plus or at least 19 hours.

Marco Langbroek, a scientist and satellite tracker at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands who has followed cosmos-482 for years, sets the estimate Closer at 4:37 am Eastern on May 10, plus or minus a day.

Where will it land?

Nobody knows. “And we won’t know after the fact,” said Dr. McDowell.

That’s because Kosmos-482 gets through space at more than 17,000 miles per hour, and it will go so fast until atmospheric friction pumps the brakes. So the timing with even half an hour wrong means that the spacecraft rigs more than half the world, in a different place.

What is known is that the job of Kosmos-482 places it between 52 degrees North Latitude and 52 degrees South Latitude, which includes Africa, Australia, most of America and much of Europe and Asia in the south and center of the latitude.

“There are three things that can happen when something comes in again: a splash, a thud or an au,” said Dr. McNight.

“A splash is really good,” he said, and can most likely be because so much earth is covered with oceans. He said that the hope was to avoid the ‘plop’ or the ‘auw’.

Will the spacecraft survive the impact?

Assuming that Kosmos-482 survives, it should come in again and, as long as the heat shield is intact is the spacecraft around 150 miles per hour, if it hits what it is in it, Dr. Langbroek calculated. “I don’t think there will be much left after that,” said Dr. McDowell. “Imagine putting your car in a wall at 150 miles per hour and see how much of it is left.”

The heat of re-entry must make Kosmos-482 visible as a clear line through heaven when the return occurs over a populated area at night.

If documents of the spacecraft survive and are found, they belong to Russia legally.

“By law, if you find something, you have a duty to give it back,” you said Michelle HanlonExecutive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi. “Russia is considered the registered owner and therefore continues to have jurisdiction and control over the object.”

How do we know the identity of this object?

About 25 years ago Dr. McDowell through the Norad catalog of around 25,000 orbital objects and tried to play an identity on each. “Most of them, the answer is:” Well, this is a piece exploded rocket from something fairly boring, “he remembers.

But one of them, object 6073, was a bit strange. Launched from Kazakhstan in 1972, it ended in a very elliptical track, which rode between 124 and 6000 miles from the earth.

While studying his job and size, Dr. McDowell that it was the quirky cosmos-482 lander not to be a piece of debris of the failed launch. The conclusion was supported by several observations of the ground, as well as A recently declared Soviet document.