A return apparently smooth. Soviet satellite Kosmos 482 which was to crash on earth this Saturday, May 10 in the morning entered the atmosphere, announce several international space agencies.
The spatial debris service of the European space agency notably indicated that the ship had returned to the atmosphere after it did not appear above a German radar station, specifies the agency Associated Press. For his part, The European Space Surveillance Agency said this Saturday at 12:30 p.m. that the satellite would have disintegrated during the last entry window into the atmosphere estimated by specialists, namely at 8:04 am.
But at the same time, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said in a message published this Saturday on Telegram that “the apparatus had fallen into the Indian Ocean”. The satellite “entered the dense atmosphere at 9:24 am, Moscow time (8:24 am in Paris)560 kilometers west of the Andaman island in the center, and was damaged in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta ”. No other source has yet corroborated this announcement.
An landing area that was imprecise
The return to earth of this capsule which has floated for 53 years in space concentrated the attention of scientists because of the difficulty in estimating the place on which he was likely to crash. The estimates reported a return between 51.7 ° north and south latitude. Either in a space covering an area from London to west of Canada and to Cape Horn to the south.
Called “Kosmos 482”, this satellite had been launched in 1972 by the Soviets as part of a vast program that targeted the Planet Venus. But due to a dysfunction of his launch rocket, Kosmos 482 had never left the orbit of the earth and floated in space since. If many parts had detached themselves from the main element over time, several scientists affirmed that the sphere which constitutes the landing capsule was always intact.
