On Saturday (10/5/25), a 53-year-old Soviet spacecraft is expected to crash into Earth.

Entry is expected on May 10, 2025 at 08:16 UTC with an uncertainty of about 8.6 hours.

Update: Live broadcast of Cosmos 482 fall from the space station

The European Space Agency (ESA) predicts that the Soviet Kosmos-482 mission's refrigeration capsule will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner on 10 May 2025. According to ESA's Space Debris Measurement Office, entry is expected at 08:16 UTC (11:16 Israel Summer Time), with an uncertainty of approximately 8.6 hours. The event will occur in a latitude band extending from 52°N to 52°S, and the collapse will occur when the capsule passes at an altitude of approximately 80 km above the Earth's surface.

The capsule, weighing about 495 kg, was launched in March 1972 as part of an experiment to launch a spacecraft into orbit around Venus, but remained in a parking orbit around the Earth due to an engine ignition failure. Thanks to a design adapted to pressure conditions of up to 100 atmospheres and resistance to accelerations of about 300G, it is possible that the capsule will survive its entry into the atmosphere almost intact.

Tracking the capsule's altitude over the past month shows how its elliptical orbit is gradually narrowing toward its expected reentry. Thanks to its nearly perfect spherical shape, the drop in altitude can be used to measure atmospheric density in low-orbit conditions, and the event has become an "accidental science experiment" to measure atmospheric drag.

While the exact location of the final pieces is not yet known, the trajectory lines within the uncertainty range suggest that the capsule could fall over large areas around the world – mainly in oceans and isolated areas – but also on land in Europe, Africa, and other areas in the above latitude range. As the date approaches, more precise updates will be received from ESA's Space Debris Office, and the forecast will be refined.

The European Space Agency emphasizes that uncontrolled space debris reentry events occur almost daily, but the chance of harming a person is extremely small – less than 1 in 100 billion per year. So far, no significant damage has been caused to the ground or settlements due to the entry of pieces of similar weight.

The spacecraft survived for over 50 years.

For more than 50 years, Cosmos-482 survived in a high elliptical orbit around the Earth thanks to unique features in its design and materials. The capsule, weighing about 495 kg and about 1 meter in diameter, was designed to cope with extreme conditions of pressure and acceleration in the air density of Venus, and consists of a thermally insulated titanium shell and an inner steel layer, which protected it from cosmic radiation, a thin atmosphere, and extreme changes in temperature. Its almost spherical shape reduced the wind stress around the body and wasted minimal energy in atmospheric drag, so it slowly lost altitude over the years.

The capsule was launched on March 31, 1972, aboard an SL-6/A-2-e launcher from Baikonur, as part of the Venera-4 mission, which was planned to land on the surface of Venus. Due to a malfunction in the engine ignition, the capsule remained in a parking orbit around the Earth instead of a transfer orbit to Venus, and thus remained in an elliptical orbit that ranged from about 210 km at the closest approach (perigee) to almost 9,800 km at the furthest (apogee). In this orbit, it spends most of its time at low altitude, where it is held by inertia and low atmospheric drag, and at high altitude it escapes almost unhindered, which extended its life in orbit to more than fifty years.

Additionally, the relatively simple electrical system—with energy-efficient lithium-steel batteries and integral radio antennas—required no maintenance or ongoing heating, so the capsule was not subject to the system fatigue that modern spacecraft with their intricate electronic components suffer from. The absence of dangling or chained parts reduced the risk of breakage or entanglement that other spacecraft components experience.

The fact that Cosmos-482 is only now approaching an uncontrolled reentry provides a rare opportunity to study atmospheric drag in low-orbit conditions. Each altitude drop measured over the past few months provides reliable measures of atmospheric density at altitudes between 210 and 80 km, and thus the nine-ton capsule serves as a “random science experiment” – a near-perfect mirror for models of atmospheric escape and space drag.

More of the topic in Hayadan:

•  NASA's Artemis 1 mission to the moon sets the stage for routine space exploration beyond Earth orbit
• NASA's OSIRIS-REx capsule containing asteroid soil samples has landed safely in Utah and been moved to a clean room
• The reason for the Genesis crash: a faulty electric battery