A Cold War-era spacecraft will come crashing down to Earth this weekend… but nobody quite knows where.

The Soviet Union’s “Kosmos 482” probe launched in 1972, bound for Venus, but suffered a rocket malfunction and ended up trapped in orbit around Earth.

Its orbit has been gradually degrading over time as the spacecraft is pulled down by gravity, and it is expected to enter the atmosphere this weekend.

Kosmos 482 was fortified to withstand the extreme conditions on the surface of Venus, which has temperatures of 477 °C and pressure over 90 times that of Earth’s.

This means that the capsule, which is roughly one metre in diameter and weighs 495kg, will probably reach the ground intact.

But the probe’s eccentric orbit, coupled with space weather, means nobody is quite sure when and where it will land.

Current best estimates is that the spacecraft will land at 6am GMT on Saturday May 10 somewhere in the Western hemisphere.

A team of researchers from University College London, the

University of Colorado Boulder and Space Environment Technologies, are working to predict precisely when and where Kosmos 482 will land, and hope to have an answer a day or two before impact.

‘It will likely land in the ocean’ 

Dr Marcin Pilinski, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, said: “The odds that this relic will land in a populated area are very low, it will very likely land in the ocean. But we can’t yet say for certain where that will be.

“People who monitor asteroids to see if they will potentially impact Earth actually have an easier job. Those objects would enter at a really steep angle. They’re not skimming part of the atmosphere for days or weeks like this spacecraft.”

Space junk and meteors regularly plummet through Earth’s atmosphere but most burn up or disintegrate on entry posing little risk. But the extra strong casing on Kosmos 482 means researchers are more worried than usual.

Dr Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said: “You wouldn’t want it bashing you on the head.”

Several pieces from the spacecraft fell to Earth in 1972, landing on fields in Ashburton, New Zealand, where they scorched holes in cropland and made deep indentations in the soil. However, nobody was injured.

Researchers say they should be able to narrow down their estimates of where the probe will crash about 24 to 48 hours before it hits Earth. As well as monitoring the spacecraft itself, experts need to keep an eye on weather near the planet’s surface which can also send disturbances upwards, creating waves and ripples in low-Earth orbit.

Solar storms can release intense bursts of energy that can cause our planet’s atmosphere to inflate like a balloon, altering the path of objects passing through it.

Dr Shaylah Mutschler, the director of the space weather division for the company Space Environment Technologies, said: “Kosmos 482 was supposed to escape the sphere of influence of Earth, but it didn’t quite do enough to get out and it’s been slowing down ever since.

“About a day out, we should know with a reasonable amount of certainty whether there’s going to be a solar storm affecting Earth or if the atmospheric conditions are going to continue to be quiet, which allows us to make predictions with much more certainty.”

While it is posing a slight risk now, researchers say that Kosmos 482 has been extremely useful over the years, because its unusual orbit allowed scientists to observe tiny changes in its motion to estimate what’s happening in that region of space and improve space weather models.

It even contributes information to the US Space Force’s orbit forecasts, which help to avoid collisions in low-Earth orbit.

Charles Constant, a researcher from UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering, who is conducting the analysis of the spacecraft’s descent, said: “Understanding space weather is becoming increasingly critical, as companies across the globe launch more satellites into orbit.

“With congestion in low-Earth orbit increasing, one collision could spell disaster for everyone else.”