The last update to the live ESA blog at 9.56am on Saturday said: “As the descent craft was not spotted by radar over Germany at the expected 07:32 UTC/09:32 CEST pass, it is most likely that the re-entry has already occurred.”
The craft was fortified to withstand the extreme conditions on the surface of Venus, which has temperatures of 477 degrees and pressure over 90 times that of Earth.
A team of researchers from University College London, the University of Colorado Boulder and Space Environment Technologies, who have been working to predict the capsule’s crash site, said earlier this week that the craft was likely to land in the ocean.
Dr Marcin Pilinski, a research scientist at the laboratory for atmospheric and space physics 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.”
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Space junk and meteors regularly plummet through Earth’s atmosphere, but most burn up or disintegrate on entry, posing little risk. However, the extra-strong casing on Kosmos 482 had made researchers more worried than usual.
The Telegraph, London
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