The Soviet spacecraft Cosmos-482, originally launched over five decades ago, has re-entered Earth's atmosphere and crashed into the Indian ocean, according to a report from Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency.
Roscosmos confirmed that the descent was monitored and guided by an automated warning system designed to track hazardous situations in near-Earth space.
The spacecraft reportedly entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 11:24 Tashkent time, approximately 560 kilometers west of Middle Andaman Island, before falling into the ocean west of Jakarta.
Cosmos-482 was launched in spring 1972 as part of the Soviet Union's space program to study Venus. However, a failure in the booster stage left the probe stranded in a highly elliptical Earth orbit. Since then, it has slowly descended over decades due to gravitational drag.
As the spacecraft’s orbit decayed further, speculation circulated online about possible impact zones, including Central Asia. An Uzbekkosmos (Uzspace) expert addressed these concerns, stating that the chances of the spacecraft falling in Uzbekistan were minimal—estimated between 0.3% and 0.5%.
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