A half-ton Soviet spacecraft is about to crash into Earth, but don't panic

A defunct, Soviet-era spacecraft is falling back to Earth uncontrolled, but experts say there’s little cause for alarm.

A defunct, Soviet-era spacecraft is falling back to Earth uncontrolled, but experts say there’s little cause for alarm.

The half-ton craft, known as Kosmos-482, was designed to land on Venus but instead has spent the past 53 years languishing in Earth’s orbit because of a rocket malfunction. Now the spacecraft is expected to plunge through the atmosphere in the coming days, with the latest forecasts predicting uncontrolled re-entry will occur sometime on Saturday.

A huge hunk of metal tumbling back to Earth may seem like a terrifying prospect, but old satellites, spent rocket parts or other small bits of space debris actually fall to Earth and re-enter the atmosphere on an almost daily basis, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

In most cases, the spacecraft will burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere, with very few — if any — parts surviving the fiery journey. But even when some pieces have withstood atmospheric re-entry, it’s very rare that they have fallen over land and caused any damage, mostly because oceans cover around 71% of the planet’s surface.

“The risk of any satellite reentry causing injury is extremely remote,” ESA officials wrote in a blog post about Kosmos-482. “The annual risk of an individual human being injured by space debris is under 1 in 100 billion. In comparison, a person is about 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning.”