Kosmos 482
 

A 500kg 50 year old Soviet spacecraft is due to enter Earth's atmosphere in a few days and might even survive re-entry.

NASA : Cosmos 482

If that's Venera 4, then it was designed to survive the plunge through the atmosphere of Venus, a far harder task that Earth's atmosphere.

Parachute possibly streamed.

https://www.space.com/space-explorat...ute-may-be-out

Be nice if it hit The Kremlin...

It’s pretty much a Venera 4 clone, but (and I guess you’ll know this but some won’t) since this one didn’t make it out of Earth orbit the Soviets did what was SOP for them, quickly relabel the thing as a common or garden Cosmos/Kosmos vehicle in an poor attempt to kid folks it was just another earth orbital mission, nothing to see here, move on…

But heat shields are dependent on proper orientation for the heat shield to work properly
If the craft is out-of-control, the heat shield won't do much protecting.

I didn't suggest that the charred remains will be in a good condition. Let's see where it lands and what can be inspected,

A good explanation, as usual, by Scott Manley:

True, however…..

I’m not sure about the fine details of Venera but I do know the reentry vehicle is roughly spherical and the Soviets had previous for designing roughly spherical shaped re-entry vehicles which simply used relative positions of CofP and CofG to ensure correct orientation, the classic example of course being the Vostok family.

I doubt that there is much that would be of interest in a 50-year-old spacecraft, even if it does survive reentry.

Should it come down in a populated area, it probably generate a bit more interest than a Boeing door.

You can track it here, a satellite tracking site. : https://www.n2yo.com/?s=6073&live=1

And here the updated predictions of the reentry time. Also calculations of reentry speeds and other related data

http://www.https://sattrackcam.#####...t-reentry.html

skadi

That link won't work because prune doesn't allow the word b**g in URLs.

If you need to post a link containing it visit TinyURL and convert it.

Your link above converted: https://tinyurl.com/3tyvhvat

What's the tipping point for this? I'm watching the numbers clicking down, altitude below 100 miles now, speed slowly increasing. At what point does the atmospheric drag become too much and pulls it down into the thicker atmosphere?
Edit, while I was watching, it reached perigee.
Less than 92 miles altitude.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....22beb7929e.jpg

Dropped another couple of kilometres this morning at perigee. Right over the UK too. 😱

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....015cf82092.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....666be0e610.jpg

That are all orbits in the actual predicted timeperiod of reentry

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....da73ae191b.png
skadi

Given that no-one knows where or when it will begin the re-entry through Earth's atmosphere, I suppose that there
will be no warnings or 'no fly zones' designated for commercial aircraft. The probability of it landing in a populated
land area or striking an aircraft or water vessel are very low of course, but still above zero. Fingers crossed.

will narrow down quickly today (Thursday) and tomorrow. I hope they update each 3 hours then. For the latest forecast (maybe Friday 20:00 UTC) I expect 2-3 sinusodial lines left with a center marker ... aviators, look up on Saturday morning (UTC) flights: 1m sphere with 500kg weight, titanium, coming down in one piece... Dont expect a safe holding zone by ATC this time :8.

Re-entry now forecast for the early hours of tomorrow (10th). Perigee now down to around 130km so not long to go.