Kosmos 482 Venus Capsule Re-entered Earth After 53 Years, Leaving No Verified Impact Site
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 26
Kosmos 482 Venus Capsule Re-entered Earth After 53 Years, Leaving No Verified Impact Site
2 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 26
Summary
Radar tracked the roughly 1-meter Kosmos 482 descent capsule over Germany at 06:04 UTC on May 10, 2025, and it vanished before its next predicted pass at 07:32, confirming re-entry after 53 years in Earth orbit.
A 1972 upper-stage timer failure stranded the Soviet Venus lander in an elongated Earth orbit, where atmospheric drag slowly lowered the path until its final descent.
No observer saw the re-entry, no wreckage was recovered and no impact site was verified; Roscosmos pointed to the Indian Ocean west of Indonesia, but other reconstructions differed by thousands of kilometers.
The 495-kilogram capsule may have survived largely intact because its spherical titanium pressure shell was built for Venus entry and extreme pressure, though that remains an engineering inference rather than an observed fact.