Soviet-Era Venus Probe Set for Dramatic Earth Return

68 years of circling our planet later, the Soviet Kosmos-482 is ready to complete its last dive. The half-ton probe, Venus vehicle, was sent out in 1972 but never reached a Venus orbit, and is predicted to re-enter the Earth’s airspace in an uncontrolled manner on Saturday.

A forecast of the spacecraft’s return has been made by space tracking agencies. The European Space Agency expects re-entry to occur between 4:26 a.m. ET on Saturday, while U.S. Space Force projects a slightly earlier arrival at about 1:52 a.m. ET, with hours of error on both sides.

Alarming as it is, a giant space body on a plunge toward our planet, researchers stress that the danger is limited to people and property. The overwhelming majority of re-entering space debris is fully destroyed by burning during atmospheric re-entry.

Scientists note several reassuring factors: About 71% of Earth’s surface is covered by Oceans, from where our fallen space debris return almost every day without incident, The zone most likely to receive our space debris is the Oceans, less than 1 in 100,000,000,000 chances of injury from space debris falling, Lightning strikes are approximately 65,000 times more probable.