(Image courtesy of Marilyn Perkins, adapted from PytyCzech via Getty Images)
A faulty Soviet spacecraft that accidentally became stuck in low-Earth orbit more than 50 years ago is finally expected to fall back to Earth this week.
Experts expect the craft, known as the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft, to make its final fiery plunge into the atmosphere sometime between May 8 and 12, traveling at 150 miles per hour (242 km/h) as it streaks across the sky like a meteor. Designed to survive passage through Venus’s thick atmosphere, the 3-foot-wide (1 meter), 1,091-pound (495 kilogram) lander could easily fall to Earth intact like space hardware.
But where will Cosmos 482 land and are there any major cities on its potential route?
Unfortunately, no one can currently say for sure where exactly Kosmos 482 will land, and its potential landing zone covers a significant portion of the planet. Given the satellite’s current orbit, it could end up landing anywhere between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude, Marco Langbroek, a professor of space situational awareness at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands who discovered the lander’s imminent return, noted in a blog post. Here’s what that area, marked in orange on the map below, looks like:
World map showing the estimated atmospheric entry range of the Cosmos 482 spacecraft (orange).
The proposed landing zone covers a vast area on both sides of the equator. This broad swath includes the entire continental United States, all of South America, Africa, and Australia, as well as much of Europe and Asia south of the Arctic Circle. (The Arctic Circle begins just above 66 degrees north latitude.) Virtually every major city on Earth, from New York to London to Beijing, falls within this area.
It sounds alarming – but don’t panic: the chances of the elusive Kosmos spacecraft hitting any populated area are extremely low. Since about 71% of our planet’s surface is covered by water, there’s a good chance that Kosmos 482 will fall into the ocean, like most pieces of space junk that return from orbit.
The chances of a spacecraft falling directly on your head are probably “a normal chance in a few thousand,” due to
Sourse: www.livescience.com
