An old failed Venus lander will re-enter from earth orbit next month, and it could land anywhere between 52 degrees north and south. Which covers basically all population in the southern hemisphere and a large majority in the north, leaving out the Baltics, Nordics, and Alaska.
It weighs a thousand pounds and is expected to reach the ground intact. Previous debris from the launch landed in New Zealand.
https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reentry.html
In addition to the TUDAT and CSpOC forecasts at the link above, the ESA Space Debris Office is also making reentry projections: https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/05/07/reentry-prediction-soviet-era-venera-venus-lander-cosmos-482-descent-craft/
Current TUDAT projection is 10 May, 7:34 UTC ± 14.6 hr, ESA says 10 May, 07:12 UTC ± 13.67 hours. Pretty good overlap.
It's still much more than a single orbit, so it can rule out some areas but it's still covering a lot of the surface.
EU Space Surveillance and Tracking chips in with "2025-05-10 06:47 UTC ±533 min"
https://www.eusst.eu/newsroom/eu-sst-monitors-reentry-object-cosmos-482/#EUSpace
And no observation at 07:40 UTC, but it's blazing bright sunlight and I'm not sure I'd have any chance of seeing it. Videos of Dragon reentry during the day are fairly rare, and it's a much larger object.
ESA reports a radar observation at 06:04 UTC over Germany.
I'm surprised that Leolabs, a commercial space radar observation company, hasn't said anything. It seems like easy PR if your network of radars can track a reentry. One of the passes goes straight over their Costa Rica radar.
@wikkit #RussianGarbage Indeed I much preferred it when Russian colonisation efforts were aimed at other planets instead of their neighbors.
It is a shame their space program seems limited to tank turrets and hitching a ride on ISS now.
@cermak_rd @wikkit Technically, no. But things do mysteriously disappear!
https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/topics/space-debris/index.html
Will this do?
A Soviet launch of a probe to Venus malfunctions, bringing the probe down in the United States. Because it is made of a new alloy, unknown to American technology, Soviet scientists and agents are anxious to recover the probe, which has landed in a remote section of Wyoming. A farmer who encounters it fires his gun at it, and the probe retreats, causing consternation among locals. The Soviets alert their agents stationed in the area (one even operates a very capitalist gas station), using the phr
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