When the Kosmos 482 space probe launched from Kazakhstan in 1972, Leonid Brezhnev was in the Kremlin and the Soviet Union was vying with the U.S. for supremacy in space.
Five decades later, the Soviet Union and its ambitious space program are no more. But the robotic spacecraft, now badly damaged, is still orbiting Earth. And experts agree that it’s about to fall to the planet’s surface — with a slight chance that it might cause damage or injuries when it does.
When will the craft come down? One news outlet quoted an expert saying it might fall this year or in early 2020. Other experts give a different timetable. “I am pretty confident in saying at least the early 2020s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the late 2020s,” said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“Every time it goes around the Earth, it loses a little bit of speed and doesn’t go up as high next time,” he added. With each orbit, the drag from Earth’s thin upper atmosphere shaves a tiny bit of speed from the probe: “Eventually, the orbit will become too low.”
Tom Metcalfe 