The Soviet ship that will fall in May.

There is one other thing that we are going to see fall, we hope not to see it fall and the further away the better, one thing that will be more disturbing and is not pretty at all, specifically after 53 years in space a ship will return to Earth Soviet space ship whose destination was Venus seems like the subject of a science fiction movie, but the reality is a little more prosaic. In 1972, the Cosmos 482 spacecraft, shown in some images and drawings, was launched by the Soviet Union to the planet Venus where it was to land, which would have given us a lot of data about that planet, since the few ships that landed there ended up charred within a few minutes. Between 1961 and 1984, the Soviet Union sent 13 Venera probes, they successfully penetrated the atmosphere of Venus and 10 landed on the surface of the planet, but they did not last very long, the one that lasted the longest was Venera 13, with a duration of approximately 127 minutes. Compare it, for example, with the ships, probes and rovers that are sent to Mars, the rovers are operational for years, which is why Venus remains a great mystery and that it is the planet most similar to Earth in terms of size and original composition, although it has later turned into a real hell.

This ship, the Cosmos 482, was destined to reveal some of those Venusian mysteries, but it turns out that the upper stage of the rocket suffered a failure and the ship was left in a dangerous orbit of the Earth that initially took it from 206 km high to 9,802 km, an orbit that has been decaying over time, to date it is one of the most dangerous pieces of space debris that exist, due to its size and because it crosses various orbits where there are many satellites and because also when enters the Earth's atmosphere it will not completely disintegrate. The core of the probe is 1 meter in diameter and has a mass of almost 500 kg, (495 kg to be exact) that core was designed to reach the surface of Venus in its entirety, a planet that has enormous atmospheric pressure and temperatures of 464ºC, so experts warn that at least that 500 kg piece has every chance of hitting the surface. This 500 kg armored Soviet ship core, because they were to reach the planet Venus and try to survive in those conditions, 464º Celsius temperature on a normal day on Venus, will end up impacting, the normal thing is that they will impact some area of ​​the ocean or some coastal surface, because most of the Earth's surface is covered by the ocean, but it can also impact some inhabited area.

The latest predictions suggest that its re-entry would be between May 8 and 11, although this could be accelerated a little in the event of a solar storm, because solar storms heat and swell the outermost layer of the Earth's atmosphere, and reach greater heights and of course what is going to make it re-enter the Earth's atmosphere is that it is low right now and is rubbing against atmospheric gases and therefore is losing speed, but if those gases are heated by a solar storm and rise, they increase their height. There will be more friction and the ship will lose speed more quickly, which will accelerate the moment of impact with the surface. Statistically it will fall on the sea, but statistically you should never say never again, the possibilities are extremely small, but it will surely fall on the sea or even on an uninhabited area, the journey also crosses deserts, but there we have the risks of space debris. Let's hope nothing happens, but it's a reminder that there's still a lot of space junk out there floating around.