Live: 53 Year COSMOS 482 Reentry Countdown

Live: 53 Year COSMOS 482 Reentry Countdown

Cosmos 482 wasn’t supposed to orbit our planet for decades. Launched by the Soviet Union on March 31, 1972, it was intended to be a Venus lander, part of the same interplanetary mission series that included the successful Venera 8, which did make it to Venus.

Cosmos 482 was its twin, tasked with following the same path to the scorching planet. But an error in its launch sequence —specifically a faulty timer— kept the craft trapped in Earth orbit. The final day of Cosmos 482’s extraordinary 53-year journey is here.

Once intended for Venus, this rugged, half-ton Soviet space probe now expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the spacecraft likely crash back to Earth within an eight-hour window. This between Friday evening and early Saturday morning.

The latest predictions from the European Space Agency (ESA) reveal that the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft poised to reenter Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 2:26 a.m. EDT (06:26 GMT) on Saturday, May 10. The uncertainty for the prediction is plus or minus 4.35 hours, giving us an estimated reentry window of roughly 10 p.m. EDT Friday (May 9) to 7 a.m EDT Saturday, according to ESA.

Falling like a meteor through the atmosphere, the roughly 3-foot-wide (1 meter), 1,091 pound (495 kilograms) craft could hit virtually anywhere on the planet. It could land at any point between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south — an enormous swath of the planet that includes almost every major populated area — according to ESA.

credit NASA