Failed Soviet Venus lander Kosmos 482 crashes to Earth after 53 years in orbit

Summary

Astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project caught this image of Kosmos 482 during one of its last orbits as it passed over Rome, Italy on May 10, 2025. (Image credit: Gianluca Masi/The Virtual Telescope Project)A failed Soviet Venus lander's long space odyssey has come to an end.The Kosmos 482 probe crashed to Earth today (May 10) after circling our planet for more than five decades. Reentry occurred at 2:24 a.m. ET (0624 GMT or 9:24 a.m. Moscow time) over the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia, according to Russia's space agency Roscosmos. Kosmos 482 appears to have fallen harmlessly into the sea.That's just one estimate, however; other space agencies and tracking organizations predicted different reentry locations, from the South Asian mainland to the eastern Pacific. It's unclear when or if we'll get a definitive answer to where Kosmos 482 came down.Astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project caught an image of Kosmos 482 during one of its final orbits as it passed over Rome, Italy just before sunrise on May 10. In the photo, the probe is "visible as a trail entering the field of view from the top and pointing to the bottom right corner," Masi wrote on his website. "The picture is the sum of four images, this is why the trail of Cosmos 482 looks dashed."Earth isn't the planet that Kosmos 482 was supposed to land on. The spacecraft was part of the Soviet Union's Venera program, which sent a fleet of probes to Venus in the 1960s, '70s and early '80s.Kosmos 482 launched toward Earth's hellishly hot sister planet in 1972, but a problem with its rocket stranded the spacecraft in an elliptical orbit around Earth. For the next 53 years, atmospheric drag pulled the probe down slowly but surely, leading to today's dramatic denouement.Most large pieces of space junk — decrepit satellites and spent rocket bodies, for example — break apart during their fiery trips back to Earth, creating artificial meteor showers. It's possible that Kosmos 4...