Heads up! Soviet-era probe to re-enter atmosphere this week, could make it to the surface

Fifty years ago, the former Soviet Union launched a probe to Venus. Except it never made it. Instead, the rocket engines shut off too early, and the probe was stuck in Earth orbit. Now, it's making its way back to Earth.

Venera 8, launched on March 27, 1972, was one of a pair of probes designed to study the surface of Venus. Four days later, it launched the second probe, which, after it was stuck in Earth orbit, was catalogued as Kosmos 482.

The probe is estimated to be around half a tonne and is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere around May 10, give or take a day and a half, according to a recent update from Marco Langbroek, who has been tracking the object for quite many years.

What's most interesting is that this lander (or re-entry capsule) was built to survive Venus's punishingly dense atmosphere. So, unlike rockets that we see re-enter Earth's atmosphere and break up (think Starship's recent mishaps), it's unlikely that this will happen with Kosmos 482.

But it's not a reason to panic, said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist with the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics's Chandra X-ray Center.

"So you've got basically something the size of a small car plowing into the Earth at [240 kilometres] an hour," he said. "Let's not overstate it, right? It's not, like, evacuate the city kind of thing. But it's like a small plane crash or something like that: You don't want to be standing right underneath."

McDowell is well known for his extensive satellite- and debris-tracking database. In fact, it was he who first postulated back in 2000 as to what Kosmos 482 could be.

"Back in 2000, I was going through every object in the NORAD space object catalogue, trying to figure out what each object was, all 25,000 of them as there were at the time. And I came across this one and went, 'OK, this is something unusual.'" 

It wasn't widely known what the object was at the time because the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in the midst of the Cold War, and many things were kept secret.

As for where it might crash, Langbroek recently told Spaceweather.com, "With an orbital inclination of 52 degrees, the Kosmos 482 descent craft could come down anywhere between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude," said Langbroek.

That covers much of the world at south and mid-latitude.

However, McDowell said that it's more likely to come down in the ocean, since Earth is mostly covered by water. 

"The odds are … it'll be in the ocean or in an empty area. But there's ... some decent chance that it'll come down in an area where there are people, though, even in populated areas, most populated areas are not like people packed side by side. And so the chances are that it won't hurt anyone."

This is a somewhat familiar story.