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More than 50 years after its launch, a Soviet spacecraft called Kosmos 482 is about to come crashing back to Earth. It was originally intended to land on the surface of Venus, but it started to fall apart in low Earth orbit and never made it beyond there. After decades of circling our planet in an oval-shaped orbit, it’s finally about to hurtle back to the ground.
Kosmos 482 launched in 1972, but because of secrecy during the cold war period, little is known about its structure or its exact mission. We only know it was headed for Venus because of other Soviet missions that were focused on our neighbouring world at the time and because the spacecraft appeared to attempt to launch on a trajectory there before it went to pieces. It isn’t clear what exactly caused the spacecraft failure, but three of the four fragments fell in New Zealand shortly after the launch.
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