Half-tonne piece of Soviet rocket may have crashed through atmosphere over south of England | Science, Climate & Tech News
A car-sized piece of Soviet rocket has crashed back through the atmosphere, after 53 years in orbit. Scientists haven’t yet pinpointed its location but one organisation has predicted it had re-entered over southern England early on Saturday morning. It is not immediately known how much of the rocket survived the blazing hot descent, with scientists suggesting it had burned up or broken up at the last minute, sometime between around 7am and 8.30am. Cosmos 482 launched in 1972 and been set to land on Venus but it became trapped in orbit after a stage of the mission failed. Scientists tracking the lander as it finally began to fall to Earth believe it decayed as it re-entered the atmosphere. EU Space Surveillance and Tracking posted on X saying it “decayed within the last estimated re-entry window”. The European Space Agency said the craft didn’t appear on radars in Wachtberg, Germany, suggesting “reentry occurred […] between 06:04 UTC and 07:32 UTC”. Image: Six organisations mapped the rocket’s location to various points around the globe. Pic: Dr Marco …