A automatic Soviet spacecraft was in space for 53 years. You will return to Earth on Friday or Saturday.
Kosmos-482 was launched in March 1972. If things went well, it would have landed on the amazing Fennos surface and became ninth of the unwilling Soviet Vanera missions on the planet. Instead, he left a missile malfunction in the Earth’s orbit. Kosmos-482 has been slowly escalating towards our world since then.
“These artifacts that were supposed to go to Venus 50 years ago and have lost and forgotten for half a century,” said Jonathan McDestoel, astronomer at Harvard and Smithsonian Center for astronomical physics. General catalog From things in space. “And now you will get her moment to enter the atmosphere – albeit on the wrong planet.”
The spacecraft, which weighs about 1050 pounds, which reaches approximately 1050 lbs, is designed to stay on a protective shield, to survive through the toxic atmosphere. This means that there is a good opportunity because it will survive from diving through this diving, and it can reach at least the surface in part.
However, the risk of any injuries on the ground is low.
He said, “I am not worried – I am not asking all my friends to go to the bottom of this.” Darren MacaniteOld technical colleague in LiolbThe company that tracks things in orbit and monitors Kosmos-482 six times a day. “Usually we have once a week a large body belonging to the Earth’s atmosphere where some of its remains will survive on Earth.”
When will Kosmos-482 return to Earth?
Estimates change daily, but the expected days of re -entering are currently on Friday or Saturday. The New York Times will provide updated estimates when reviewing.
one Window account By Aerospace Corporation, a federal non -profit organization that tracks the wreckage of space, suggests 2:07 am East time on May 10, in addition to or minus four hours. Space power provided a similar time frame, at 1:52 am
Marco Langbroek, a tracker and satellite at the DELFT University of Technology in the Netherlands that follows Kosmos-482 for years, Estimation Closer to 2:30 am on May 10, in addition to or minus about 4 hours.
Where is the spacecraft now?
Where the spacecraft will enter into an unknown atmosphere. But its location can be calculated above the ground using the tropical data that was published periodically by the leadership of the defense in North America and distributed by web sites such as Distance space.
Once the brush investigation begins against the atmosphere, these accounts become unreliable. (This map will stop tracking Kosmos-482 at that stage.)
Where will you connect?
Nobody knows. “We will only know after the truth.”
This is because Kosmos-482 swings across space more than 17,000 miles per hour, and this will be done quickly until the atmosphere is pumped brake. So getting a timing error up to half an hour means that the spacecraft enters more than half of the world, in a different place.
What is known is that the orbit of Kosmos-482 places it between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south of the southern latitude, which covers Africa, Australia, most of the Americas, many southern and medium Europe and Asia.
“There are three things that can happen when something returns: a splash, diving, or Och.”
He said: “Wafdah is really good,” and it may be probably because a lot of land is covered with oceans. He said that hope is to avoid “stain” or “Och”.
Will the spacecraft survive the effect?
Assuming that Kosmos-482 survives the re-entry-must, as long as its thermal shield is sound-The spacecraft will go about 150 miles per hour, when it was shattered in everything that broke it, the calculated by Dr. Langbrook. “I don’t think there will be a lot after that,” said Dr. McCdueel. “Imagine putting your car in the wall 150 miles per hour and seeing the amount of it.”
It should make the re-entry heat from Kosmos-482 visible as a bright sin across the sky if its return occurs to a populated area at night.
If it is alive and restored the spacecraft, it belongs to Russia.
“Under the law, if you find something, then you have to return it,” he said. Michelle HanlonExecutive Director of the Air and Space Law Center at the University of Mississippi. “Russia considers the registered owner, and therefore still has the judicial state and control of the object.”
How do we know the identity of this being?
About 25 years ago, Dr. McCdueel has been passing through the Catalog Nurd, which is about 25,000 orbits and was trying to fix an identity on each of them. He recalls, “Most of them, the answer is,” well, this is a piece of explosive missile from somewhat boring. “
But one of them, an object 6073, was a little strange. It was launched in 1972 of Kazakhstan, ending in an oval orbit, traveling between 124 and 6000 miles from Earth.
While he studied its orbit and its size, Dr. McCdueel influenced that he should be the Cosmos-482 Land-and-not just a piece of debris from the failed launch. The conclusion has been supported by multiple notes from the ground, as well as A Soviet document that I summarized recently.