00:00So this thing, Cosmos 482, a high-tech capsule, was built to survive even the most extreme heat of another planet.
00:08But something went wrong. It never made it out of Earth's orbit.
00:12For over 50 years, it drifted silently around the planet.
00:16Forgotten until now.
00:18In May 2025, gravity finally pulled it down.
00:22It's coming home, built to survive re-entry, and unpredictable enough to crash anywhere.
00:27No warning. No parachute.
00:30Just a thousand-pound sphere falling from the sky, a human-made meteorite capable of causing chaos.
00:37In 1972, this funny-looking ball was sent on a Venus-bound mission.
00:43Now, Venus is like Earth's evil twin.
00:45It's similar in size, but that's where the similarity ends.
00:49It's the hottest planet in the solar system, where temperatures reach 860 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead.
00:57Atmospheric pressure is about 93 times greater than Earth's, which is like being 3,000 feet underwater and you feel like you're in a trash compactor.
01:06And the atmosphere itself is made of carbon dioxide, with clouds that literally rain sulfuric acid.
01:13So yeah, it's pretty bad.
01:15Yet, Cosmos 482 was fully expected to reach it and land.
01:20Not for long, though.
01:22A type of self-destruct scouting mission.
01:24The spacecraft was designed to land and transmit data, hopefully for at least a few minutes.
01:29On the surface that crushes, bakes, and basically dissolves anything that touches it.
01:35How?
01:36Well, it came with heat shields for the fiery plunge, a mini-AC to cool just long enough, and armor tough enough to handle Venus's brutal environment.
01:46It was truly a high-tech reinforced vault built for a one-way trip.
01:51And this was in the early 70s, mind you.
01:53Ah, fun fact?
01:54Even today, we've never built anything that could survive that kind of environment.
01:59We have deep-sea submersibles that can handle big-time pressure, but not the heat.
02:04There are space capsules that can withstand extreme temperatures, but only for a few minutes.
02:09Even nuclear reactor walls, designed to handle serious pressure, would crumble if acid rained on them nonstop.
02:17Now, a funny twist to this story is that landing on Venus was already achieved in 1970.
02:22Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to land on another planet and transmit data back to Earth,
02:29surviving on Venus's surface for a full 23 minutes before melting down.
02:34It proved the impossible was possible, just not for Cosmos 482.
02:40So, what went wrong with Cosmos 482?
02:43We've always imagined space travel as firing up the spaceship, launching it, and that's it.
02:49However, that's not how it works.
02:51First, with an initial boost, you park it in Earth's orbit, like pulling into space's driveway.
02:58Then comes a second burn, a precisely timed engine firing that pushes the spacecraft out of orbit and toward its destination.
03:06Cosmos 482 made it to the parking orbit just fine.
03:10But something went wrong with the second push.
03:13No push means no trip.
03:15So, instead of heading to Venus, it got stuck circling Earth for the next 50 years.
03:20But why does something get stuck orbiting for so long?
03:25Well, when something gets launched into space, it's not just going up.
03:28It's also going really fast sideways.
03:32If you throw a baseball up hard enough, it'll eventually hit the ground.
03:36But if you could throw it fast enough, and Earth wasn't in the way,
03:39it would just keep falling around the planet.
03:42That's what orbiting means – falling but never hitting the ground.
03:46The object's forward speed balances perfectly with the gravity pulling it down.
03:51So, to leave Earth, a spacecraft needs to pass through three layers.
03:55The first is low Earth orbit, or LEO, a few hundred miles up.
04:00Here is where satellites, the space station, and tons of leftover junk circle the planet.
04:05Cosmos never made it past this point.
04:09If the second launch had been successful, it would have gone through medium Earth orbit,
04:13where GPS satellites cruise.
04:15Then, way out at 22,000 miles, there's geostationary orbit,
04:20the sweet spot for weather reports and TV.
04:23So, now we know how Cosmos ended up there, and why it was orbiting for so long in LEO.
04:29But what made it suddenly change its mind and fall back?
04:33Even in LEO, space isn't completely empty.
04:36There's still a tiny bit of atmosphere up there, and over time, it acts like a brake,
04:42slowing things down just enough.
04:45Think back to that baseball you threw sideways fast enough to orbit Earth.
04:49Eventually, it will slow down to the point where gravity takes over.
04:53However, Earth is securely protected by its atmosphere.
04:56As objects fall back to Earth, their speed keeps increasing up to tens of thousands of miles per hour.
05:03When you're moving that fast, the air pushes back really hard.
05:06That push creates friction, and friction creates heat, a lot of it.
05:11The surface of falling objects can reach over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit,
05:15causing them to melt, shatter, or vaporize completely before they ever hit the ground.
05:21That's why scientists don't lose sleep over small debris.
05:24Small pieces of old satellites, even tools lost during spacewalks, fall all the time.
05:30But they burn up like shooting stars.
05:33We just never notice them.
05:35Now, a baseball would disintegrate instantly.
05:38But what about a giant ball designed to withstand landing on Venus?
05:43Thankfully, this potentially horrifying story is anticlimactic,
05:47because Cosmos crashed into the Indian Ocean, west of Jakarta, on May 10, 2025.
05:54Radar picked it up, streaking through the sky, glowing, breaking, heating up,
05:59but still intact enough to make it all the way down.
06:02And it did.
06:03Thankfully, not somewhere crowded.
06:05However, now that it's lost beneath the waves, we are free to speculate.
06:10Hmm, how real was the danger?
06:13Could it have fallen into a crowded area?
06:15Yep, absolutely.
06:17If that thousand-pound capsule had come down over a city,
06:20it could have smashed through rooftops, wrecked cars, or worse, seriously injured someone.
06:25And no, there wouldn't have been sirens or alerts.
06:28Cosmos 482 was launched in the 1970s, long before GPS or live tracking.
06:34So there was no signal to follow.
06:37No proper guidance system.
06:39Scientists could only make rough estimates about where it might land.
06:42So if it had come down over land, it would have looked like a meteor.
06:47Well, the story of Cosmos, with a K, had a happy ending.
06:51But it's not the only thing up there that could fall down.
06:55As of early 2025, about 11,700 satellites are active.
07:00But with roughly 14,900 in orbit, that means over 3,000 are no longer operational.
07:08And the space junk keeps piling up.
07:11Space tracking systems monitor more than 40,000 objects that are bigger than a softball,
07:16such as pieces of old satellites and bits of rockets.
07:20Scientists estimate there are over a million fragments larger than a half an inch,
07:24and more than 100 million smaller bits still floating around.
07:28These can't hurt us down on Earth, but most of it clutters LEO,
07:32where collisions can generate explosive clouds of debris, damaging satellites and space stations.
07:39Just one crash can trigger a chain reaction called Kessler syndrome,
07:44where each impact creates more debris, leading to more collisions,
07:48until Earth's orbit turns into a demolition derby.
07:51Remember the movie Gravity?
07:53Yeah, like that.
07:54And yes, bigger things from LEO do fall.
07:57Cosmos 482 wasn't the first space object to come crashing back.
08:02In 2016, Tiangong-1 space station lost contact and tumbled back to Earth two years later,
08:09eventually burning up over the Pacific.
08:11In 2001, the famous Mir station was intentionally brought down.
08:15And before that, in 1991, Salute 7, another space station,
08:21unexpectedly de-orbited.
08:23The 40-ton station broke up on re-entry,
08:25and parts that survived scattered over Argentina.
08:29Among others, in 1979,
08:31NASA's Skylab, the very first American space station,
08:35fell back to Earth with only partial control.
08:38Pieces of it rained down across Western Australia.
08:40Some newspapers even offered cash rewards to anyone who found a chunk.
08:45So, we've seen this happen before.
08:48Cosmos was just the latest reminder.
08:50But NASA and other space agencies do think about this problem.
08:54And most modern spacecraft designed to return
08:57have parachutes, heat shields,
08:59and built-in safety systems to guide them home.
09:02But not working satellites and old junk.
09:04Yeah, they're still up there.
09:06So next time, a space object might not land safely in the ocean.
09:10Might crash through your roof while you're watching a bright side video.
09:13But don't worry.
09:17That's it for today.
09:18So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
09:20then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:23Or if you want more, just click on these videos
09:25and stay on the bright side.
Comments