Soviet-era spacecraft hits ocean after 50 years in orbit
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An image of Verna 4, a similar spacecraft to Kosmos 482. (NASA)
May 10 (UPI) -- A Soviet-area spacecraft that orbited Earth for more than 50 years crashed into the Indian Ocean on Saturday, Russian officials confirmed.
"The Kosmos-482 spacecraft, launched in 1972, ceased to exist, deorbiting and falling into the Indian Ocean," the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos said on the cloud-based social media platform Telegram.
The spacecraft hit the ocean around 9:24 a.m. MST Saturday, or 2:24 a.m. EDT.
"The descent of the spacecraft was monitored by the Automated Warning System for Hazardous Situations in Near-Earth Space," according to the Roscosmos post.
The spacecraft fell into the Indian Ocean somewhere west of Jakarta, initially entering the planet's atmosphere some 380 miles west of the Middle Andaman Islands in the Andaman Sea.
The European Space Agency tracked the satellite over Germany shortly after 2 a.m. EDT Saturday before it disappeared from radar.
In the spring of 1972, the Soviet Institute for Space Research launched Kosmos 482 with the goal of studying and eventually landing on Venus.
"But due to a malfunction of the booster block, it remained in a high elliptical orbit of the Earth, gradually approaching the planet," Roscosmos said in the post.
The spacecraft was one of several launched with a goal of studying Venus under the Soviet-era Venera program.
Scientists have long been curious about the similarities between Venus and Earth.
Both planets are considered "geographically young" and have nearly the same size and mass. In 2023, NASA scientists discovered volcanic activity on Venus, after looking closer at photos taken of the planet in the 1990s by the Magellan robotic space probe.
Earlier that year, officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered new geological patterns that gave further insight into how the planet releases heat.
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