https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482
> Its landing module, which weighs 495 kilograms (1,091 lb), is highly likely to reach the surface of Earth in one piece as it was designed to withstand 300 G's of acceleration and 100 atmospheres of pressure.
Awesome! I don't know how you can design for 300 G's of acceleration!
Article says ±3.1 days, but the author wrote a newer entry (go to homepage, click on latest article, click through to space.com link¹) that says May 10, ±2.2 days.
Starting to get to the range where a timezone would be helpful!
Via Wikipedia², which will probably also get updated fast, this page says they'll stay updated with the latest estimate: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-...
¹ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
Would be awesome if it soft-landed on a field and started taking and transmitting pictures of sheep.
Childhood me hopes this will play out exactly like the Six Million Dollar Man episode. That it will roam around terrorizing rural California, and we’ll have to team up with a pretty young Russian scientist and Bigfoot to stop it.
I wonder if the producers of that show knew about that failed mission, and that this was actually really in earth orbit, when they wrote that episode.
when i first heard about this probe last week i was wondering, isn't this thing old and unique enough to warrant a mission to rescue and preserve it? combined with todays lower prices for a space flight, it might just be worth it.
and now it looks like it might just survive anyways. but then according to the article there also seems to be a second (identical?) model. so maybe it's not that important, except for maybe material analysis what does 50 years of exposure to space do to the material.
Man, I wish we had the technology to just concoct a spacecraft that can intercept the lander in its shallow reentry and bring it back in as few pieces as possible.
I don't know what value can it have to be studied since it never left low earth orbit (albeit it was there since 1972), but I know it would be a cool addition to any museum that may host it.
Any projected intercept for earth yet? Feels like it might be quite beautiful on reentry assuming you’re in the right (but not TOO right) spot.
It would be pretty stereotypically Soviet to create a parachute system that only mostly (some of the Venera probes kinda crashed) works in the intended use case (short 1-way trip to Venus) but also somehow manages to work once way, way, way outside of its intended operating environment (50yr orbiting earth).
If it falls in my backyard. Can I keep it to myself?
What are the chances it lands and kills a whale?
Lander reports that Venus is very… earth-like.
Those of a certain age will remember this as the premise of the Six Million Dollar Man episode Death Probe (S4E13).
It sounds like it will definitely land, no parachute, because it was made to be strong enough to survive the pressures of Venus. I hope it doesn't land near me.
I wonder if something like this could basically be a time capsule for germs/viruses/pathogens that no longer exist? Could that ever be a risk?
If the parachute had already deployed sometime during the past 50 years, wouldn't it burn up on re-entry?
This would be a good start of a plot line for some alien life form
Soviet is the best (c)
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It's funny/sad how a bunch of Soviet Venera probes had malfunctioning camera lens caps and returned black photos. From Venera 9-12 all four probes had malfunctioning lens caps. And then
> The Venera 14 craft had the misfortune of ejecting the camera lens cap directly under the surface compressibility tester arm, and returned information for the compressibility of the lens cap rather than the surface.