“Kosmos 482” is scheduled to crash today: When and where will the Soviet probe hit Earth?

Originally intended to land on Venus in the 1970s, it never made it out of Earth's orbit due to a rocket malfunction: The Soviet space probe, dubbed "Kosmos 482," has been orbiting Earth for almost 53 years and is slowly losing altitude, experts suspect. An uncontrolled crash is imminent, but when and where will it happen?

Kosmos 482 is expected to enter Earth's atmosphere on May 10, 2025. The exact time is difficult to predict because it depends on various factors such as solar activity and atmospheric conditions.

• ESA's Space Debris Office predicts that the lander will re-enter on May 10, 2025, at 10:12 CEST (as of May 8, 2025). The uncertainty of this prediction is currently +/- 13.67 hours.
• The Technical University of Braunschweig has also calculated the re-entry of Kosmos 482, which is expected to occur on May 10, 2025, at approximately 6:45 a.m. CEST (as of May 8, 2025). The uncertainty of this prediction is currently +/- 7 hours.

The exact crash site of Kosmos 482 cannot be predicted with any precision. According to experts, the probe orbits Earth in an elliptical orbit, and re-entry is highly dependent on constantly changing atmospheric conditions. According to ESA, predictions of the crash site will become more accurate the closer re-entry approaches.

It is currently believed that Kosmos 482 will orbit at a point between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude .

This area is enormous and includes parts of North, Central, and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe south of Germany. Determining the crash site to within a few kilometers is currently impossible. Since oceans make up about 70 percent of the Earth's surface, the chances of a water landing are quite good.

Probably not completely, because Kosmos 482 has one important special feature: the landing capsule is extremely robustly built to withstand the enormous pressure and heat on Venus.

The approximately 495-kilogram probe could partially or even completely survive the crash and, if it crashes in a populated area, could cause property damage or personal injury. It's also conceivable that the parachute system is no longer functional after so many years, making the impact even harder. However, the probability of human injury is extremely low.

Kosmos 482 is a Soviet space probe launched on March 31, 1972, originally with the goal of landing on Venus. It was a failed space project within the Soviet Venera program, which was intended to explore Venus.

However, due to a launch failure, the launch vehicle failed to bring the probe from Earth's orbit to an interplanetary trajectory to Venus.

According to the ESA, the risk of injury during re-entry is extremely low. The annual risk of a human being injured by space debris is less than 1 in 100 billion. By comparison, the probability of being struck by lightning is about 65,000 times higher.