The Soviet Venus lander was last detected over Germany and is believed to have completed an uncontrolled re-entry after orbiting Earth for more than 50 years.
Kosmos 482 was never meant to return to Earth. It was part of the Soviet Union’s Venera program, which dispatched a series of probes to Venus during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s.
In 1972, Kosmos 482 launched on a mission to Venus but a malfunction with its rocket left the spacecraft stranded in an elongated orbit around Earth instead. Over the next 53 years, the steady tug of atmospheric drag gradually pulled the probe closer to our plane.
Unlike most space debris—such as defunct satellites and spent rocket stages—that typically disintegrate in the atmosphere and create brilliant, short-lived meteor showers, Kosmos 482 may have survived reentry intact. That’s because it was built to endure the intense descent through Venus’ dense atmosphere.
After more than five decades in orbit, the probe finally came down yesterday, May 10. According to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, 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. The spacecraft appears to have splashed down safely in the sea.
Just hours earlier, astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project managed to photograph Kosmos 482 during one of its final passes over Rome. “The probe is visible as a trail entering the field of view from the top and pointing to the bottom right corner,” Masi noted on his website. “The picture is a composite of four images, which is why the trail appears dashed.”
