After 53 Years, a Failed Soviet Venus Spacecraft Is Crashing Back to Earth 66
Kosmos 482, a failed Soviet Venus probe, is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry in mid-May after orbiting Earth for 53 years. Gizmodo reports: The lander module from an old Soviet spacecraft is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere during the second week of May, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Leiden, the Netherlands. "As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact," Langbroek wrote in a blog update. "The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero."
Kosmos 482 launched on March 31, 1972 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan. The mission was an attempt by the Soviet space program to reach Venus, but it failed to gain enough velocity to enter a transfer trajectory toward the scorching-hot planet. A malfunction resulted in an engine burn that wasn't sufficient to reach Venus' orbit and left the spacecraft in an elliptical Earth orbit, according to NASA. The spacecraft broke apart into four different pieces, with two of the smaller fragments reentering over Ashburton, New Zealand, two days after launch. Meanwhile, two remaining pieces, believed to be the payload and the detached upper-stage engine unit, entered a higher orbit measuring 130 by 6,089 miles (210 by 9,800 kilometers).
The failed mission consisted of a carrier bus and a lander probe, which together form a spherical pressure vessel weighing more than 1,000 pounds (495 kilograms). Considering its mass, "risks are similar to that of a meteorite impact," Langbroek wrote. As of now, it's hard to determine exactly when the spacecraft will reenter. Langbroek estimates that the reentry will take place on May 10, but a more precise date will get clearer as the reentry date nears.
Kosmos 482 launched on March 31, 1972 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan. The mission was an attempt by the Soviet space program to reach Venus, but it failed to gain enough velocity to enter a transfer trajectory toward the scorching-hot planet. A malfunction resulted in an engine burn that wasn't sufficient to reach Venus' orbit and left the spacecraft in an elliptical Earth orbit, according to NASA. The spacecraft broke apart into four different pieces, with two of the smaller fragments reentering over Ashburton, New Zealand, two days after launch. Meanwhile, two remaining pieces, believed to be the payload and the detached upper-stage engine unit, entered a higher orbit measuring 130 by 6,089 miles (210 by 9,800 kilometers).
The failed mission consisted of a carrier bus and a lander probe, which together form a spherical pressure vessel weighing more than 1,000 pounds (495 kilograms). Considering its mass, "risks are similar to that of a meteorite impact," Langbroek wrote. As of now, it's hard to determine exactly when the spacecraft will reenter. Langbroek estimates that the reentry will take place on May 10, but a more precise date will get clearer as the reentry date nears.
Send Putin (Score:1)
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Maybe we could get Musk to take Putin to "Occupy Mars" - killing two birds with one stone. Or both Putin AND Trump - three birds, one stone!
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which is why traffic is trending towards zero.
Slashdot is doing just fine. The reduction in traffic is due to ClownFlare repeatedly crashing.
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No, you want to send Biden. The launch failure and current reentry catastrophe was all his fault.
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killing two birds with one stone
Id love to see two men one rocket, how disgusting could it be?
Re:Send Putin (Score:5, Informative)
He stole democracy from his own people, disrupts ours and other Western nation's elections, and invades European democracies but he's a good guy, right?
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Not really;Yeltsin did that, (with out support an encouragement) but he was a drunk who did not really want to be in power so he more or less handed Putin the keys.
Russia was a constitutional republic where when the legislature fails to do what the executive wants the executive has the military shell it.
That Russia was a democracy was a farce before Putin took power. Saying Putin stole democracy is giving him to much credit.
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Given that Putin was their last leader to be properly elected in what was perceived as free and fair elections by the West I think my claim supports itself just fine. Never mind the massive curtailment in news media freedoms that have happened under his watch.
Re:Send Putin (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm still waiting for S'wer to return our manhole cover.
We're headed for Venus, but still we stand strong (Score:4, Interesting)
53 years. And it was built to land on Venus, so it is almost certainly going to survive re-entry. There is a ~11/9 chance that it will water in the ocean, and it might survive that, too. Well, as much as a dead probe can survive, anyway. The parachute will probably not open, and most of the ocean is deep enough that the probe might not withstand the pressure.
This is exciting. Maybe they will collect it and display it in a museum? If they can find it. It is practically lost technology: When was the last time a probe was sent to land on Venus?
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AI Overview
The most recent probe to successfully land on Venus was part of the Vega 2 mission in 1985. The Vega 2 lander, along with a lander from Vega 1, successfully landed on Venus's surface on June 15, 1985
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it is almost certainly going to survive re-entry
There is a difference between a controlled re-entry and an uncontrolled. Furthermore, this spacecraft is not completely intact, which could have consequences.
Re:We're headed for Venus, but still we stand stro (Score:4, Funny)
I agree. The Russians should probably evacuate from Mar Al Lago, just in case.
Re: We're headed for Venus, but still we stand str (Score:3)
Parachute (Score:3)
The parachute will probably not open,
I quickly checked Wikipedia, it's the last of the older design probes that used actual parachutes.
Starting from Verena 9, the probes switched to using a ring-shaped aerobrake which doesn't require deployement, but is heavily optimised toward the insanely dense Venus atmosphere and won't work much in the much thiner Earth atmosphere.
and most of the ocean is deep enough that the probe might not withstand the pressure.
Quick check again: Venus surface pressure (which Verena 8 is designed to withstand) is 92 bars.
That's roughly equivalent of 1km depth in the ocean.
That leaves a significant perce
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The pressure vessel was titanium alloy. That would hold up quite well to an ocean environment. Actually, most materials you'd build a pressure vessel out of could hold up to an ocean environment for a while - maybe long enough to try to find and retrieve it. It'll be awfully tough to locate, though.
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It's going to be fairly well known where it went down. The search for MH370 has recently resumed in part because submarine drones are now at the point that they can map the seafloor incredibly fast. If someone thinks it's worth paying for the search, it's probably feasible to find it.
Retrievable (Score:2)
Yup, I also had in mind the fact this could be potentially retrievable by a company such as Ocean Infinity.
The problem is that, from what little I understand space law, the space junk would belong to the country which launched and was in charge of the probe.
And technically Russia isn't currently in a position where it could afford to pay for a retrival mission.
On the other hand, according to the the Kosmos 482 wikipedia entry, USSR has denied knowledge and/or ownership for the previous pieces falling down (
Re:We're headed for Venus, but still we stand stro (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a ~11/9 chance that it will water in the ocean, and it might survive that, too.
Probabilities range from 0 to 1.
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Not in Soviet Russia!
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Odds, however, do not.
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There is a ~11/9 chance that it will water in the ocean, and it might survive that, too.
Probabilities range from 0 to 1.
Not true, it’s a statistic and 9/5ths of statistics are made up.
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Right, I meant that odds are 11 to 9. So it's an 11/20 chance.
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https://education.nationalgeog... [nationalgeographic.org]
Shouldn't it be 14/20 ?
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If it was in polar orbit.
As it is, it orbits at an inclination of 52 degrees, and between those latitudes the ratio of land to ocean is higher.
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Are you sure something can orbit the Earth at a constant 52 degree latitude relative to Earth at all times? It doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Picture it it with the Earth rotating, moving in space etc. On top of that it's a rogue satellite!
Try with a globe and a marble or a ping-pong ball, we should come to the same conclusions. IMHO, the only latitude where you can orbit over constantly is 0, the equator.
So in the end, 14/20 seems a better approximation IMHO.
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Are you sure something can orbit the Earth at a constant 52 degree latitude relative to Earth at all times?
Are you sure that is what I said?
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"As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact,"
Does anyone else suspect it's going to impact on a children's hospital or orphanage in Ukraine?
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There is a ~11/9 chance that it will water in the ocean
I did not know that Russian probes could pee.
Re:We're headed for Venus, but still we stand stro (Score:4, Funny)
Wasn't that the scenario of an episode of "Six Million Dollar Man"?
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Death Probe, part 1 (S4E13), and part 2 (S4E14).
Possibly inspired by part of the Kosmos 482 probe crash-landing in New Zealand five years earlier.
But it is not clear why a Venera probe would carry weapons, much less use them.
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How does a thing that isn't water, 'water in the ocean'? What? A thing can't water. The only thing that is water, is H2O.
Also, no -- it will not survive atmospheric re-entry. The atmosphere see to that. The heat of re-entry exceeds the temperature of Venus by *THOUSANDS OF DEGREES*.... It will not survive in 1 piece. This isn't a matter of atmospheric pressure, nor is this a matter of G-shock. It's plasma; it'll be in an envelope of super-heated plasma. Why do you think they can't use the radios
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To be extra clear, here: titanium melts around 1,900 kelvin. The temperature of re-entry is 3,200 kelvin. Yes, 3,200 kelvin is "below" the temperature required to make titanium boil (by 300 kelvin), but you'll note that the 1,900 is 3,200 by 1,300.
Who honestly thinks titanium that's been heated to 'just below' its boiling point for half an hour, will be somehow intact once it's slow enough to not self-generate plasma due to atmospheric drag?
Ridiculous.
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How does a thing that isn't water, 'water in the ocean'?
By not being made of water.
It can't land where there is no land, can it.
Are you going to ask next how a thing that isn't land can land on land?
Why do you think they can't use the radios on the Shuttle during re-entry?
I think that's because the Shuttle has been decommissioned in 2011.
The heat shield of the shuttle could withstand a temperate of up to 1533 Kelvin. That's a lot less that 3200 Kelvin. No wonder it exploded in 2003.
To be extra clear here, the shuttle's heat shield was made of silicium dioxide, and the melting point of silicium is 1683 Kelvin.
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A radioactive museum piece? No lighting needed. I suspect it has plutonium RTGs in it
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It does not, it uses a battery.
Besides, the Soviets preferred solar panels over plutonium for their space probes. RTGs make sense in the outer Solar system where the heat is useful to keep the electronics at operating temperature. Venus is not that cold.
Space junk locked up in a Police cell (Score:4, Interesting)
A farmer near Ashburton, New Zealand found one of the fragments - a titanium ball - on his farm in 1972. No one knew what it was, they thought it might be dangerous or even radioactive. Not knowing what to do, the local Police took it away and locked it up in their Police cell.
The New Zealand Government tried to give it back to Russia, but they denied it was theirs. Eventually, the mysterious ball that no one wanted, was given to a local museum, where it still resides.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/... [nzherald.co.nz]
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Those early space exploring Russians and their titanium balls...
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I remember when reports of those space balls were in the news in New Zealand https://www.odt.co.nz/star-new... [odt.co.nz]
More Info (Score:2)
Anybody remember a 6mil$ man episode about this? (Score:2)
I seem to remember there was an episode where a failed launch resulted in a Russian Venus probe running around the deserts of California, and only the Six Million Dollar Man could stop it...
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
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Yip, one of my favorite episodes as a kid. I built a replica of the probe out of Lego's and had it attack the dog. (All pretend of course, except it did interrupt the poor dog's nap.)
life (Score:2)
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Zombies? (Score:1)
Wasn't this how the zombies in Romero's original Night of the Living Dead get created? A Venusian probe crashing back to Earth?
It will not survive (Score:2)
It will likely handle atmospheric reentry with barely a scorching. Even if after 53 years it had systems still functional and able to deploy a chute, that chute was meant for a much thicker atmosphere and pretty much wouldn't matter. Whether it hits land or sea, it'll do it at a velocity that is well beyond the limit it could survive.
Might be some big pieces, though.
It's kind of sad. I wish it was less expensive to get to orbit, because it would have been great to save the probe and put it in a museum so
It won't survive re-entry. (Score:2)
'"As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact," Langbroek wrote in a blog update"'
Uh, no.
1) High-energy plasma at 3,200 K upon re-entry. This occurs for 25 minutes or so. This is why Columbia became ... a large number of pieces of wreckage strewn across multiple US states.
2) Venera probes use drag-parachutes to reduce velocity to the point that they can survive entr
Radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG)? (Score:1)
Plutonium RTG? The Soviets loved plutonium....
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Anyone listening? Does this probe have an RTG. I assume so, but can someone check the specs. What is going to happen to the plutonium inside it?
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Plutonium RTG? The Soviets loved plutonium....
I was concerned about this too. The Wikipedia doesn't give any info about RTGs on board. A quick search couldn't find any info about RTGs on the other Soviet Venus probes either. It doesn't mean there *isn't* a plutonium RTG on board though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
We've seen this before... (Score:2)
At least those of us who grew up with "The Six Million Dollar Man"... Death Probe [fandom.com]