The failed Soviet spacecraft Kosmos 482 has at last returned to Earth after 53 years in orbit. It plunge into the Indian Ocean in the early hours of Saturday morning, 10th May.
The Soviet spacecraft designed to land on Venus got stuck in the space 53 years ago and has finally crash-landed back on Earth.
The Kosmos 482 probe, a relic from the first Space Race, crashed harmlessly into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia at 2:24 a.m. EDT (6:24 a.m. GMT), the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced on Telegram. No damage or injuries have been reported, and there is no news yet whether the lander reached the ocean in one piece.
Launched in 1972, Kosmos 482, it was intended to be part of the Soviet Union's Venera program that collected data from Venus.
But a malfunction in the upper stage of the Soyuz rocket booster that lofted the ship skyward scrubbed its mission, leaving the craft with just enough velocity to be adrift in an elliptical trajectory around our planet. Now, less than 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) from where it first launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, the probe's long journey has finally ended.
"The Kosmos-482 spacecraft ceased to exist, deorbiting and falling into the Indian Ocean," Roscosmos wrote in the translated Telegram statement. "The descent of the spacecraft was monitored by the Automated Warning System for Hazardous Situations in Near-Earth Space."
Following its failed launch, Kosmos 482 broke into several pieces comprising the lander and the main body. The main body reentered Earth's atmosphere nine years after launch on May 5 1981, while the lander remained trapped inside a slowly decaying orbit that has persisted for more than 50 years.
The craft's uninteresting landing is seen as a relief, but scientists posed it has little to no risk of harming anyone.