[HN Gopher] Failed Soviet Venus lander Kosmos 482 crashes to Ear...
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Failed Soviet Venus lander Kosmos 482 crashes to Earth after 53
years in orbit
Author : taubek
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-05-10 13:51 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.space.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.space.com)
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Apparently it crashed near Java in the Indian Ocean [0]. Any news
| on retrieval efforts?
|
| [0] https://t.me/roscosmos_gk/17407
| rhcom2 wrote:
| Coming down at "145 miles per hour-plus" and a "mass of just
| under 500 kg and 1-meter size" I would imagine there are just
| pieces out there now.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| Apparently it was quite dense as to be able to survive the
| Venetian atmosphere so there has been speculation it may stay
| somewhat intact.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| It was suppose to come down with a parachute but fingers
| crossed.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Venetian"_
|
| That one means "having to do with Venice". Of Venus would
| be "Venusian", "Venereal" (yes, really), or "Cytherean".
| Or, one of a dozen others--it's a Greek god-name; there's
| millennia of culture to drawn on.
|
| There's an entire Wikipedia entry devoted to this adjective
| question,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytherean
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| Oh right! I did know that but typo'd it thanks.
| squigz wrote:
| That Italian atmosphere _is_ really rough!
| deepsun wrote:
| That's nothing compared to Venus. There it's 500C with
| sulfuric atmosphere.
| pinewurst wrote:
| A lot like New Delhi...
| bell-cot wrote:
| And ~1,300 psi at the surface, and a few other features.
|
| On the upside - undeveloped property is readily available,
| and quite affordable.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" On the upside - undeveloped property is readily
| available, and quite affordable"_.
|
| It's a dry heat anyway.
| deepsun wrote:
| Too expensive. It's very hard to find even an aircraft carrier
| at the surface, ocean is just too big. Metallic non-moving
| things at the bottom is easier, but it still often takes years
| to find a large sank ship, yet alone a small round spacecraft.
|
| But there are many ocean hunters ready to jump on the
| assignment, if you secure funding.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Darn. Where's an inexpensive carbon fiber based submarine
| when you need one?
| kennethrc wrote:
| It's been down there waiting!
| asdefghyk wrote:
| There have been searches for years for MH370 airline in
| Indian ocean and it has not been found. I guess the problem
| there is getting a more accurate? location where it came
| down...
| pests wrote:
| They've found debris though, so we know it's fate.
| netsharc wrote:
| They're going to find MH-370 instead...
| asdefghyk wrote:
| Any information on ocean depth in that area? Or did it float?
| for a while?
|
| From NASA article -
| https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id...
| Apparently, it broke up too 4 pieces soon after launch time and
| it was the lander that was circling earth for 53 years..
|
| From https://www.npr.org/2025/05/12/nx-s1-5395631/a-soviet-era-
| sp...
|
| "...The Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a Telegram post
| that the spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere Saturday
| morning at 2:24 a.m. ET and landed in the Indian Ocean
| somewhere west of Jakarta, Indonesia. It said Kosmos 482
| reentered the atmosphere about 350 miles west of Middle Andaman
| Island off the coast of Myanmar. ..."
|
| NASA gave the same reentry time and landing location for the
| spacecraft in a post on its website...."
| justinator wrote:
| The entire Soviet Union Venus missions are absolutely
| fascinating. "Hardening" takes on a whole new meaning when you're
| preparing a craft to survive mere minutes on Venus' surface. I'm
| a little surprised their deep sea craft never got much attention.
| deepsun wrote:
| USSR focused on Venus, because at that time it wasn't apparent
| which one would be more interesting/accessible -- Venus or
| Mars.
|
| And USSR didn't want to compete with US anymore, after lost the
| Moon race. USSR really did want the Moon too, after so many
| prior successes. So switching to Venus allowed to "split" the
| race.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The Soviet Union landed a rover on Mars almost 30 years
| before NASA. Unfortunately the lander it was tethered to,
| Mars 3, stopped communicating about two minutes after landing
| so the rover didn't get a chance to go into action.
|
| Anyway, the Soviet Union's relative lack of success with Mars
| wasn't really for lack of trying. Space is hard.
| floxy wrote:
| >The Soviet Union landed a rover on Mars almost 30 years
| before NASA.
|
| The Mars 3 landed on Mars in 1971:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_3
|
| The NASA Viking program landed on Mars in 1976:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program
|
| ...but I guess that didn't rove.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Right, NASA's first remote controlled rover (anywhere)
| was Sojourner in 1997. The first _successful_ remote
| controlled rover was the Soviet Lunokhod 1 in 1970. That
| succeeded in driving around the Moon for almost a year.
|
| Mars 3 didn't pan out but I still think that level of
| ambition from the Soviet Union, relative to NASA, is
| notable and worth celebrating.
| FredPret wrote:
| Astronaut Chris Hadfield wrote a fun book involving
| Lunokhod: The Apollo Murders.
| KyleBerezin wrote:
| I wish we could push things like this into a higher orbit. High
| enough to not be a danger and to be preserved for future
| generations.
| jl6 wrote:
| There's a (very slim) chance this one is being preserved at the
| bottom of the Indian Ocean for whoever invents submersible
| scanner drone swarm tech to find it.
| kortilla wrote:
| Doing this requires immense amounts of energy because you need
| to match its velocity to safely bump it.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Related:
|
| Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873531 02-may-2025 280
| comments
|
| After 53 years, a failed Soviet Venus spacecraft is crashing back
| to Earth https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831602
| 29-april-2025 46 comments
|
| Soviet-era spacecraft plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in
| orbit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43949025 10-may-2025 0
| comments
|
| A Soviet-era spacecraft built to land on Venus is falling to
| Earth instead https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43938644
| 09-may-2025 1 comment
| perihelions wrote:
| The other recent threads,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873531 ( _" Old Soviet
| Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry (leonarddavid.com)"_ --
| 291 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831602 ( _" After 53
| years, a failed Soviet Venus spacecraft is crashing back to Earth
| (gizmodo.com)"_ -- 50 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43944167 ( _" Cosmos 482
| Descent Craft tracker (utexas.edu)"_) -- 9 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942194 ( _" Cosmos-482
| descent craft re-entry prediction (esa.int)"_) -- 5 comments
| daltont wrote:
| Paging Steve Austin:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puvc-FodxV4
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTWJc72p2pE
| codedokode wrote:
| It is not surprising that it remained intact for 53 years. In
| USSR, unlike modern times, all products were made to last, like
| refrigerators, motorcycles, TV sets or clothes, because there was
| not enough supply to replace them every year.
| squigz wrote:
| Weren't USSR products rather famously poorly built?
| codedokode wrote:
| I saw still working after many years Soviet refrigerators,
| motorcycles and TV sets, so maybe they were built not that
| poorly after all. Of course there could be some survivorship
| bias, but generally modern (inexpensive) things seem to break
| earlier.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I wonder if they just had a lot of repairs done to them,
| due to the unavailability of alternatives.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Depends; they might not have had the most expensive materials
| available, or the trickiest assembly quality, but were often
| designed so that the inevitable repairs could be made quickly
| in the field by minimally-trained personnel.
|
| See: Zaporozhets 968 vs. Hillman Imp, AK-47 vs. AR-15, T-72
| vs. M1.
| spyrja wrote:
| I think "simple but rugged" would be a more apt description.
| Less moving parts than the US equivalent, easier to maintain,
| and usually fairly sturdy. On the other hand, since cost was
| a constant concern, Soviet equipment was generally not
| designed with aesthetics in mind. So "ugly but reliable"
| might be another way to put it!
| pezezin wrote:
| We are talking about space junk, a dead chunk of metal just
| orbiting Earth until its inevitable decay. Saying that it was
| "intact" and "built to last" is disingenuous.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But it wasn't built to orbit Earth for 53 years. It was built
| to land and survive for a period on the surface of Venus. I
| can think of few places more difficult to survive, so to say
| it wasn't built to last is disingenuous on your part.
| coolcase wrote:
| Yeah Elons car will last forever in space, but probably won't
| start. Maybe it will.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > It is not surprising that it remained intact for 53 years.
|
| I mean we couldn't use for the last 53 years and it didn't
| fulfill its mission. It's like saying the boulder in my yard
| has remained intact for 100 years "they just don't build them
| like they used".
| II2II wrote:
| I was under the impression that the Soviets launched multiple
| identical missions to account for failure. In other words:
| rather than investing a huge effort into reducing the
| probability of failure of a singular mission, they invested in
| multiple missions in hopes that one would be successful. If
| that is the case, it sounds like the had much more confidence
| in the engineers who did the design work than their ability to
| do quality control while building.
|
| Any how, it's meaningless to compare old Soviet products to new
| Western ones. The older Soviet ones are likely still in use due
| to an incentive to maintain and repair them. Old Western
| products were probably just as repairable, but there was less
| incentive to do so. As for new Western products, there are both
| technological and business reasons to ignore repairability.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| My favorite Six Million Dollar Man episode is where Steve Austin
| had to fight a Soviet Venus rover that accidently landed on
| Earth. It was autonomous, obviously, and because it was designed
| to survive on Venus, it was nearly indestructible.
|
| No one comes up with plots like that anymore!
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I had the live tracking up and went to bed and apparently it fell
| out of the sky about 90 minutes later :-). I was hoping that if
| it started burning over North America I'd be able to go out and
| see it go over. Alas.
|
| I heard rumors that it had a Plutonium RTG on it for power, that
| would have been a bit spicy if it had splatted across the ground
| somewhere. Does anyone have any primary sources on whether or not
| that was the case?
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(page generated 2025-05-13 23:00 UTC)