On 10 May 2025, an uncontrolled reentry took place of the Cosmos-482 descent craft, a Venera landing capsule that launched 53 years earlier. It was meant to land on Venus, but its launcher never escaped Earth’s gravity.
The Soviet-era object was last spotted over Germany at 08:04 CEST on 10 May by our colleagues at Fraunhofer FHR as it passed through the sky over their antenna. Because the descent craft was not spotted one orbit later, at the expected 09:32 CEST pass, the reentry can be assumed to have occurred between these two times.
A precise time and location of its reentry have so far not been identified. We have not received any reports on direct visual observations of the final reentry or of any impacts on ground.
This GIF combines images of Cosmos-482 tumbling through space on Thursday 8 May, about 2 days before reentry. The overlay image in the GIF helps to identify the orientation and what is reflected in the radar image.
The images were captured by the Tracking and Imaging Radar (TIRA) at the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Germany. The TIRA-acquired radar tracks helped to improve the knowledge of its orbit and finetune our reentry predictions.
