In the spring of 2025, the Soviet-built Cosmos-482 Descent Craft, originally designed to land on Venus, instead began making an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The EU’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) service was key to monitoring its trajectory and ensuring that communities on the ground stayed safe.
Key figures
that’s how much the titanium-shelled Soviet craft weighed
±20 minutes, 10 May 2025 – SST’s estimate of when the craft would re-enter the atmosphere
the latitude band of the craft’s re-entry, covering a vast area of the Earth’s surface
The challenge
Although Cosmos-482 had a ‘low’ chance of striking populated areas, that didn’t mean no chance, especially given its uncontrolled re-entry. Weighing 500 kg and encased in a titanium shell built to withstand Venus’s corrosive atmosphere, the spacecraft was likely to survive re-entry largely intact. This made careful tracking of its trajectory all the more important.
The solution
SST’s sensors played a crucial role in monitoring Cosmos-482 and providing the data needed to estimate where and when the craft would re-enter the atmosphere. The re-entry point estimations were continuously updated, with the last estimate for 10 May 2025, around 6.04 UTC±20m.
Results and impacts
The EU SST analysis confirmed that Cosmos-482 re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere within the last estimated time window, showcasing the accuracy of SST in imperative situations like these.