After the space was released for 53 years, AM Moscow returned to the dense layers of the planet on Saturday at 9:24 am, entered the dense layer of the planet atmosphere, at 9:24 am Moscow at 9:24, entered the dense layer of the planet at 9:24, at 9:24, at 9:24 am Moscow at 9:24 9:24 am. According to RoscosmosRussian state corporation that runs a space program.
Kosmos-482, which was designed to land on the surface of Venus, could remain intact during his decline. Roscos said Roscosmos.
Kosmos-482 started 31 March 1972, but after premature closure of missile boosters stuck in the Earth’s orbit. The return of the spacecraft on Earth was a reminder of the Cold War competition, which caused sci-fi similar to the visions of earthly forces that protruded into the solar system.
“He remembers the time when the Soviet Union was adventurous in space – when we were all perhaps more adventurous in space,” he said Jonathan McDowellAstrophysicist in Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which monitors objects running in orbit. “In this sense it’s a bit bittersweet.”
While America won the Moon race, the Soviet Union through its Venera program focused on focusing on Venus, twisted sister of the country.
From 1961 to 1984, the Soviets launched 29 spacecraft towards the wrapped world. Many of these missions have failed but More than a dozen not. Venera spacecraft watches Venus from orbit, gathered atmospheric observations, while gently descending through toxic clouds, gaining and studying soil samples and sending the first and only pictures we have from the surface of the planet.
“Kosmos-482 is a reminder that 50 years ago the Soviet Union reached the planet Venus. Here is the physical artifact of this project, at that time,” he said Asif siddqiA historian at the University of Fordham, who specializes in space and scientific activities in the Soviet era. “I’m something special and convincing about it, how the past still orbit on Earth.”
Half a century later, when nations portray the return to the moon and throw their probes to Mars, Jupiter and various asteroids, Lonely Japanese spacecraft is the only vehicle orbiting Venus. Other proposed missions have in the face of a delay and uncertain futures.
During the space race, the biggest price was to put shoes per moon – but also the other worlds in our solar system also called. As the United States more and more focused on Mars, the Soviet Union turned to the second rock from the Sun.
“Both sides were interested in Mars at the time, but Venus was a simpler goal,” he said Cathleen LewisCurator of international space programs and suit at the Air & Space Institution Smithsonian Institution.
Almost the same size as Earth, Venus is often referred to as its twin, although it is probably as non -free as the rocky planets get. It is obsessed in a strong atmosphere of carbon dioxide and hidden under kilometers of sulfuric acid clouds. Venus surface is a victim of the greenhouse escape, is a shaking of 870 degrees Fahrenheit and crushed by atmospheric pressures about 90 times larger than the ground.
“How do you build something that can survive the multimont path through the solar system, get to the planet through a dense atmosphere, get to the ground and not hide or be crushed and photographed?” Dr. Siddiqi. “It’s a kind of incredible problem to think about solving in the age of 60.”
The Soviets, who were not interjected by the challenges that represent such a penalty world, threw their hardware on Venus again and again. And there was no template to do it at the time.
“You literally invented the thing you want to send to Venus,” Dr. Siddiqi. “Nowadays, if a country like Japan wanted to send something to Venus, they have 50 years of textbooks and technical manuals. At the age of 60 you had nothing.”
The Venera Soviet program has achieved a number of superlatives: the first probes that entered the atmosphere of another planet, the first spacecraft that landed safely on another planet, first recorded the sounds of alien landscape.
The Kosmos-482 failure occurred during this timeline. And on Saturday, the first meeting of the country with the intended Venus Lander was not the first meeting.
Around 1:00 local time 3. April 1972, just a few days after a problem start, the city of Ashburton in New Zealand visited several 30 pounds of titanium balls, each size of the beach ball and marked with a Cyrillic inscription.
One ended in the field of Tuřín, which worried local citizenship. New Zealand Herald informed in 2002 One of the spheres “was eventually locked in a police cell in Ashburton because no one knew what to do with it.”
Although the Space Act specifies that the ownership of the crashed cosmic building remains with the country that triggered it, the Soviets did not require the ownership of the spheres at that time. “Space balls” were finally returned farmers who found them.
And while Kosmos-482 was lost, his sibling, which was launched a few days earlier, was finally landed on Venus, was named Venera 8. This spacecraft survived and transmitted data from the surface for 50 minutes. Two years later, when they arrived Venera 9 and 10 – for the Soviets, the building in redundancy meant the opening of two of everything – slowly descended through the clouds, touched down to the planet’s surface, and lit back from the desert yellowish world.
The Venera program ended in the middle of the 80s. The ambitious Vega probes. These missions began in 1984, in 1985 Landers on the Venus surface and in 1986 flew Halley comet.
“The inheritance of the Soviet survey of Venus of the 70s and 80s was washing for the USSR,” Lewis.
The Kosmos-482 re-entry, albeit unique for historical reasons, is not so unusual. Today nations and companies present even more hardware into orbit and there are no lack of objects falling from the sky.
“Rescups are now very common,” he said Greg HenningEngineer expert and space fragments at Aerospace Corporation, a federally supported non -profit organization that monitors objects in orbit. “We see them for dozens of days. They won’t notice most of the time.”
This is especially true at the moment when the sun is quite active, as increased solar activity inflates the Earth’s atmosphere and increases the campaign of orbiting objects.
Some of these re -efforts give a spectacular light show. They may result from the controlled cord back to the ground, such as SpaceX capsules and crew capsules. Others are random, as unsuccessful test flights Prototypes Starship SpaceX. And others are deliberately uncontrolled and potentially quite dangerous as in the case of Chinese long missile 5b March boosters, objects sufficiently large enough to cause significant problems when re -entering the inhabited area.
In rare cases, however, the object, as the Kosmos-482, will return to Earth as a record of the first steps of humanity to the space that suffers from the Earth.
“There is an archive of a space race, still circling the ground. In the 1950s, 1970s, so many things were launched,” Dr. Siddiqi. “Sometimes we remind us that this museum is there, because it drops to our heads.”
Jonathan Wolfe The report contributed.
