McDowell explained:
“It would be better if the heat shield fails, which would cause the spacecraft to burn up… But if the heat shield holds, it’ll reenter intact and you have a half-ton metal object falling from the sky.”
While the chances of Kosmos 482 hitting a populated area remain small, its descent is a reminder of the long-term consequences of space debris.
This Soviet-era mission, originally designed to uncover Venusian secrets, now threatens to become a rare example of space hardware crashing back to Earth after decades in orbit.
Read more at the original report from the New York Post.
