[Regnum] The Soviet interplanetary spacecraft Cosmos-482, which was launched in 1972 to explore Venus but did not leave near-Earth space, has ceased to exist. This was reported by the press service of Roscosmos.
The device left orbit under the control of the automated warning system for dangerous situations and sank into the ocean.
| It was a noble effort. Now the world ocean is its tomb. |
"Cosmos-482" was the second of the devices sent to Venus in the spring of 1972. Four days apart, on March 27 and 31, the USSR launched two similar automatic interplanetary stations. The first device, "Venera-8", successfully reached the planet and spent a little over 50 minutes on its surface. The station managed to transmit data on the environment to Earth, including the composition of the atmosphere and soil, having fully completed its task.
The second Venera-72A spacecraft reached near-Earth orbit after the first three stages of the Molniya-M launch vehicle operated normally. However, due to a malfunction of the booster engine, the station could not be launched into an interplanetary trajectory. The spacecraft remained in a high elliptical orbit and began to gradually approach Earth. The unsuccessful launch was not announced, and the spacecraft that remained near the planet was named Cosmos-482.
Earlier, Roscosmos reported on the correction of the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) using the Progress MS-30 spacecraft to prevent a possible collision with fragments of space debris. On May 1, the spacecraft turned on its engines, which worked for almost 213 seconds. This impulse was enough to increase the station's orbit by about 540 m. The average orbital altitude reached 418.74 km.