Soviet Spacecraft Kosmos 482 Crashes to Earth After 53 Years

A Soviet-era spacecraft called Kosmos 482 has crashed on Earth after 53 years "stuck in orbit," according to The Associated Press.

According to the AP, both the Russian Space Agency and the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Agency confirmed the spacecraft had crashed on Earth.

The Russians "indicated it came down over the Indian Ocean," the AP wrote, but "some experts were not so sure of the precise location." No one appears to have been injured.

The Russian Space Agency wrote on Telegram, according to a translation, "The Kosmos-482 spacecraft left orbit and fell into the ocean. The Kosmos-482 spacecraft, launched in 1972, ceased to exist, leaving orbit and falling into the Indian Ocean."

According to calculations by specialists "from TsNIIMash (part of Roscosmos), the device entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 9:24 Moscow time, 560 km west of Middle Andaman Island, and fell in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta," the Russians wrote. Roscosmos is the Russian Space Agency's name.

"The spacecraft was launched in the spring of 1972 to explore Venus, but due to a malfunction in the booster block, it remained in a high elliptical orbit of the Earth, gradually approaching the planet," the Russians continued.

Live Science explained, "Following its failed launch, Kosmos 482 broke into several pieces consisting of the main body and the lander." The former piece entered Earth's atmosphere in 1981, the site reported. The descent craft "remained trapped inside a slowly decaying orbit that has persisted for more than 50 years," Live Science reported.

It wasn't clear how much of the spacecraft made it to Earth, though, because of the potential for it to disintegrate upon entering Earth's atmosphere. However, the AP noted that the ship "was built to withstand a landing on Venus, the solar system’s hottest planet."

"#EUSST is monitoring the re-entry of object Kosmos-482 Descent Craft (1972-023E #6073), the lander capsule of a spacecraft from 1972 intended to land in Venus. EU SST contributing sensors are observing the object to narrow down the re-entry window," the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking agency wrote on X on May 6, 2025.

The EU SST wrote that the spacecraft's nature was "controlled."

"Due to its inclination of approximately 51.95 degrees, the object could re-enter within a latitude band of ±52 degrees, covering a vast area of the Earth’s surface," the agency wrote on its website. "Most of this area is ocean or uninhabited land, so the statistical probability of an impact on the ground in populated areas was low. As the re-entry approached, the predictions became more accurate, but uncertainties remained due to the object’s uncontrolled nature."

The EU SST "contributing sensors played a crucial role in observing the object and providing data for analysis. The EU SST Operations Centres used this data to produce the best possible estimation for the expected re-entry location and time. A ground track for the re-entry window was continuously updated, and the current window was refined as more data became available," the site says.