Russian authorities have confirmed that a Soviet spacecraft that had been orbiting the Earth for more than half a century fell into the Indian Ocean on Saturday.
“The Kosmos-482 spacecraft, launched in 1972, ceased to exist, leaving orbit and plunging into the Indian Ocean,” Roscosmos reported on the cloud social network Telegram.
The craft hit the ocean at about 9:24 a.m. Moscow time Saturday, or 2:24 a.m. Eastern time.
“The descent of the spacecraft was controlled by an automated system for monitoring dangerous situations in near-Earth space,” Roscosmos said in a statement.
The craft fell into the Indian Ocean somewhere west of Jakarta, initially entering the planet's atmosphere about 380 miles west of the Middle Andaman Islands in the Andaman Sea.
The European Space Agency tracked the satellite over Germany shortly after 2 a.m. ET Saturday before it disappeared from radar.
In the spring of 1972, the Soviet Space Research Institute launched Cosmos 482 with the aim of studying and possibly landing on Venus.
“However, due to a malfunction of the booster block, it remained in a high elliptical orbit of the Earth, gradually approaching the planet,” the Roscosmos press release said.
The spacecraft was one of several launched to explore Venus as part of the Soviet Venera program.
Scientists have long been interested in the similarities between Venus and Earth.
Both planets are considered “geographically young” and have almost the same size and mass. In 2023, NASA scientists discovered volcanic activity on Venus after carefully studying images of the planet taken in the 1990s by the Magellan robotic space probe.
Earlier this year, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered new geological patterns that provided insight into how the planet generates heat.
Sourse: www.upi.com
