When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. On May 10 of this year, the egg-shaped Kosmos-482 descent module, weighing roughly 1,091 pounds ...

If everything had gone to plan, an uncrewed Soviet-era spacecraft would have landed on Venus in 1972 to conduct a few hours of operations before dying for good. The probe known as Cosmos 482 was meant ...

Update for 9 a.m. ET on May 9: According to the European Space Agency, the current reentry window for the Kosmos 482 Venus probe is 2:26 am ET on May 10 +/- 4.35 hours. This story was updated to ...

Some of those early space probes succeeded in their missions, capturing the first measurements and images from the Venusian surface. Kosmos 482 was not one of them. Launched in 1972, Kosmos 482 was ...

Venus is a pressure cooker with surface temperatures that melt lead. Yet, in the 1970s, the Soviet Union achieved the ...

In brief: A space probe that has orbited Earth for over half a century is expected to reenter the atmosphere within the next week. Although the failed lander might impact Earth's surface at least ...

A spacecraft launched over half a century ago has finally returned to Earth. The Kosmos (Cosmos) 482 descent craft—originally designed to land on Venus—reentered Earth's atmosphere this week after ...