After 53 years, a failed Soviet Venus spacecraft is crashing back to Earth

https://gizmodo.com/after-53-years-a-failed-soviet-venus-spacecraft-is-crashing-back-to-earth-2000595234

by WalterGR • 1 year ago

131 44 1 year ago

xattt• 1 year ago

As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact.

I did not consider this outcome at all, but this makes sense. I am hoping the descent mechanism activates and the spacecraft lands intact.

accrual• 1 year ago

That would be pretty cool indeed. My only concern is that the craft probably doesn't have any attitude control, so it may enter backwards or tumbling, which may limit the effectiveness of the heatshield on the probe. Even so, surely large pieces of it will make it back home intact.

voidUpdate• 1 year ago

If it is the same as other venera probes, it is designed so that aerodynamic forces will stabilise it into a heatshield-forward attitude

azernik• 1 year ago

The descent mechanism would be built for the much denser Venusian atmosphere. On Earth, it may not slow the thing down enough.

orbital-decay• 1 year ago

It will not, of course - anything that's inside is long dead, not designed for Earth atmosphere, and it had to be programmed to trigger in the first place.

In fact, the capsule could also burn up on reentry. Sure, it's a Venera-8 double designed to enter Venus' atmosphere at 11.6km/s... but it has extra mass on it (the upper stage never separated so it should look like [1]) and the capsule's CoG doesn't take all that stuff into account, which might cause it to tumble, reenter backwards, or damage it. On the other hand, it's reentering from a really low-energy orbit so it could survive the reentry - but not the impact in case it lands on the ground.

[1] https://epizodyspace.ru/01/2u/solnthe/ams/v-8/v-8.html

renhanxue• 1 year ago

Marco Langbroek, who did the reentry forecast that the linked article is based on, convincingly argues[0] that the bus did separate and reenter separately (in 1981) and what remains in orbit is just the lander. There are several independent pieces of evidence that are consistent with this; the orbital decay pattern, the radar cross section and optical telescope observations all point to only the lander itself remaining.

See also his blog[1] for an up-to-date reentry forecast.

[0] https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4384/1

[1] https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-...

wolrah• 1 year ago

I am hoping the descent mechanism activates and the spacecraft lands intact.

I think it's a safe bet that any descent mechanism designed for the thick atmosphere of Venus is not going to function the same way on Earth.

sylens• 1 year ago

Is there somewhere I can read about why the Trans Venus injection burn failed?

bragr• 1 year ago

According to Wikipedia, the stage timer was set incorrectly so the injection burn cut out early.

js2• 1 year ago

1972 March 31 - . 04:02 GMT - . Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Complex: Baikonur LC31. LV Family: R-7. Launch Vehicle: Molniya 8K78M. FAILURE: The escape stage Block L's engine cut off 125 seconds after ignition due to timer failure.. Failed Stage: U.

http://www.astronautix.com/v/venera.html via https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4384/1 via Wikipedia article on the probe.

SoftTalker• 1 year ago

Hope it's not full of plutonium or other nasty stuff.

m4rtink• 1 year ago

That would be more likely for outer system probes, where even simple radio isotope heaters could be very useful.

For Venus it is unlikely to need anything like that, as the expected flight duration was much shorter (quite important for not very durable Soviet electronics) and main issue would be actually cooling.

marcusb• 1 year ago

The Soviet Venera program was really fascinating. It is quite impressive that they managed to build landers that survived even a short period on the surface of Venus, let alone return photographs.

https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-venera-program-interpl...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera

Sylleib• 1 year ago

Another cool site with lots of details and pics: http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm

Cthulhu_• 1 year ago

I read about it years ago, I never knew they actually landed on Venus.

That said, I wonder whether with advances in material science and the likes they could build something that lasts longer.

chasil2• 1 year ago

You will want to see these photos.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43638520

Swizec2• 1 year ago

The Soviet Venera program was really fascinating

Reading my uncle’s old tech magazines and sci-fi from the 70’s was fascinating. Eastern European sci fi was all about colonizing Venus and the Venera landers. The way kids in USA are obsessed with Mars, kids in my part of Europe used to be obsessed with Venus before the influx of Western media.

Getting to grow up on the cusp of that vibe shift was cool.

glimshe• 1 year ago

Cool! What tech magazines are you talking about?

chasil2• 1 year ago

This Kurzgesagt video is equally sci-fi, but of the "potentially possible if we wanted to bankrupt the planet" variety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI

dmix• 1 year ago

Probably the coolest space program after Apollo.

The photos, the huge effort involved, and general strangeness of Venus is a great read. Lots of good youtube docs as well.

Paul-Craft• 1 year ago

The Soviets literally beat the US to every single major milestone in the space program, up through the 60's, except for literally landing men on the moon.

euroderf• 1 year ago

I want to see the proposed balloon missions proceed and succeed.

TurkTurkleton• 1 year ago

There's a collection of images returned by the various Venera probes (including the surface photos from Venera-9, -10, -13, and -14) restored from tapes of the original transmissions here: http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

Edit: Oop, missed that someone else posted a link to that same site (different page) a while before me. Well, nevertheless.

andrewflnr• 1 year ago

Such an incredible mixture of badass achievement and hilarious failure. I guess that's kind of in character for the Soviets, but you don't usually see the two ends of the spectrum mixed so closely.

sph• 1 year ago

Nothing represents alien, inhospitable world than those yellowed pictures from Venus. Even Mars seems mundane in comparison.

It’s sad that I will probably not live long enough to see a better quality picture of the Venusian hellscape.

arprocter2• 1 year ago

Live map here:

https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=6073

harywilke• 1 year ago

That's really cool. Do you think this will be visible for those near the entry path?

arprocter2• 1 year ago

I defer to the much smarter folks on this site, but my layman's assumption would be if it comes down in the dark it'll look like a shooting star

The altitude seems to be falling pretty quickly at the moment, although presumably the atmosphere will slow it down

tocs3• 1 year ago

Would I get to keep it if it lands in my yard?

bobmcnamara• 1 year ago

Probably not, but maybe.

Some of it came down in New Zealand in 1972, the Soviets didn't own up to it, so the farmer kept it.

ojciecczas• 1 year ago

I hope it crashes into Moscow.

Molitor5901• 1 year ago

This reminded me of space junk and what the heck are we going to do with it?? There's not enough money behind cleaning it up to make it even feasible. There are some interesting magnetic ideas, but overall it seems like the concept of space junk is just here to stay.

trympet• 1 year ago

I’m not much of a YouTuber shill, however, I feel this crowd would enjoy Scott Manley’s video [1] on the subject

[1] https://youtu.be/vGQgmnQ1FtA?si=sylxAkAKj-kT5fUq

dhc02• 1 year ago

I like to imagine as if we threw something into the air so hard that it went up for 26 years, then came back down for 26 years.

1970-01-01• 1 year ago

That's exactly what happened, except it went around the world a million times too.

Oneword• 1 year ago

It may have been engineered to withstand high heat but.. is this thing going to be controlled from the ground for heat shield positioning? Highly unlikely. This thing will tumble and fly into a million pieces. Perhaps parts will survive entry but its not going to be a slam dunk. Or maybe it will. The Earth is 2/3's water after all.

After 53 years, a failed Soviet Venus spacecraft is crashing back to Earth

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