Astronomer McDowell: Soviet spacecraft “Kosmos-482” may crash into Earth in May

The decommissioned Soviet interplanetary probe “Kosmos-482” could fall to Earth between May 7 and 13, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell in his blog.

He estimates the car-sized object has a “good chance of surviving atmospheric entry and reaching the planet’s surface.”

“Under such circumstances, I’d estimate a one-in-several-thousand chance of it actually hitting someone,” the scientist cautioned.

Originally launched by the USSR in March 1972, the “Kosmos-482” probe was intended to gather data from Venus’s hostile surface. However, due to a malfunction in one of the rocket boosters, it became stranded in Earth’s orbit.

On April 27, reports emerged that an international team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the U.S. made an unexpected discovery—a planet twice Earth’s size, orbiting at a distance greater than that from the Sun to Saturn (over 1.35 billion km). This newly found exoplanet belongs to the “super-Earth” category—worlds with masses between Earth and Neptune.

Earlier research revealed that Earth-like planets likely orbit around one in every 300 Sun-like stars.