Until the end of the year, a Soviet probe for the exploration of Venus may collapse on Earth. It will not burn in the atmosphere.

The autonomous interplanetary station Kosmos 482 was launched on March 31, 1972.The First Three Steps

The launch vehicles worked normally, but due to an accident, the fourth probe could not leave low-Earth orbit.

Now the probe is on low near-earthorbit - the height of its rotation is 1,309.6 km, whereas a year earlier the device was at an altitude of 1,367 km. At the moment, the speed of the device is sufficient to continue the rotation in orbit, however, as it descends, its speed will decrease.

According to scientists, the probe should fall between 2023 and 2024, but astronomer Thomas Dorman said in a conversation with Space.com that this could happen as early as 2019.

It is extremely difficult to predict the location of the fall of the spacecraft - most of the previous satellites that de-orbited fell into the ocean.The publication notes that so far not a single death has been recorded, the cause of which would be the fall of a satellite or space debris.