DANGER FROM SPACE: Old Soviet Satellite Kosmos 482 Set To Fall Back to Earth Next Week, Raising Fears It May Cause Deadly Strike on Our Planet’s Surface
A broken and inactive Soviet satellite is expected to fall back to Earth next week, raising concerns from space experts that it could potentially hit the planet’s surface with deadly results.
The New York Post reported:
“The unit ‘might well survive Earth atmosphere entry and hit the ground’, warned British-American astronomer Jonathan McDowell in a blog post. ‘In which case, I expect it’ll have the usual one-in-several-thousand chance of hitting someone’.
Launched in March 1972 by the USSR, the Kosmos 482 probe was dispatched to gather data from Venus’ inhospitable surface. However, due to a malfunction with one of the rocket boosters, the intergalactic recon machine was left stranded in Earth’s orbit — literally spiraling out of control.”
More than half a century later, the ‘dead’ spacecraft is on track for reentry between May 7 and 13.
“Marco Langbroek, a Dutch space expert who discovered the lander’s impending comeback tour, speculated in a blog post that it is possible that the satellite could penetrate Earth’s forcefield and ‘impact intact’ because it was designed to ‘survive passage’ through Venus’ fiery atmosphere.”
Langbroek estimates the wreckage’s end velocity at 145 miles per hour-plus on impact.
The craft is equipped with a parachute, but the feature isn’t expected to work, and the risk is similar to that of a meteorite impact.
“Thankfully, we don’t need to brace for deep impact just yet, per Langbroek, who pointed out that the ‘risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero’. MacDowell seconded this assurance that we likely won’t get struck by the ‘dense but inert’ space junk as most of the world is not inhabited by people.
‘If you land something in a random part of the Earth, the chance that it hits a person is about one in 10,000’, the expert told the Daily Mail. ‘The chance that it hits you is then one in 10 billion – smaller than that’.”
Kosmos 482 could strike anywhere between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude – an area that encompasses Europe and Asia, as well as the Americas, Africa and Australia.
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