Soviet spacecraft expected to crash land on Earth in just days. Here’s what to know

A piece of Soviet-era space debris is expected to crash land down to Earth this weekend.

The Russian Kosmos 482 spacecraft launched in 1972 could come plunging down some time between Friday and Sunday, according to NASA – but exactly when and where is currently a mystery.

As of Tuesday, the lander probe could strike between 52 degrees north latitude and 52 degrees south latitude, including all of Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand, most of Europe and Asia, and the continental U.S. Experts say people shouldn’t be “too worried,” but that they cannot exclude the chance of the spacecraft actually hitting someone or something.

"There's a not-trivial chance that it could hit somewhere where it damages property, and there's a small chance — but it's like one in thousands — that it could hurt someone,” Dr. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian, told NPR.

A more accurate location and timeline should be known over the coming days, but NASA said the uncertainty “will be fairly significant right up to reentry.”

For now, here’s what to know.

It can take the heat

“Because the probe was designed to withstand entry into the Venus atmosphere, it’s possible the probe (or parts of it) will survive reentry at Earth and reach the surface,” the space agency warned.

Although Venus isn’t the closest planet to the sun, it is the hottest. The average surface temperature of the planet is a blistering 870 degrees Fahrenheit. Comparatively, when the future Orion spacecraft comes back from the moon, it will experience temperatures around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it screams back into Earth’s atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour. The extreme temperatures are why most falling debris burn up upon re-entry.

It was once larger

Hundreds of objects enter Earth’s atmosphere every year. At least three old satellites or rocket bodies come down every day. Most objects that don’t burn up and disintegrate fall into the ocean, which covers 70 percent of Earth’s surface. It is rare for this debris to cause damage, but it does happen. With an increasing number of satellites in low-Earth orbit, the situation has become more precarious.

Over time, the atmospheric drag slowly lowers the orbit of space debris like Kosmos 482. The Venus probe failed to escape low-Earth orbit after its launch in 1972. Instead, the spherical, 1,000-pound object broke into four pieces after its rocket malfunctioned. Two of them decayed, and the lander probe — which has a parachute that may be visible right now — and another piece went higher.

“It is thought that a malfunction resulted in an engine burn which did not achieve sufficient velocity for the Venus transfer, and left the payload in this elliptical Earth orbit,” NASA said.

Scientists are still working to study Venus

The 1972 launch came toward the end of the space race. The Soviet Union had been launching Kosmos spacecraft ten years before Kosmos 482. Kosmos 482 was a sister probe to the successful Venera . Since then, dozens of other missions have been launched to explore Venus.

Several NASA missions are slated for the next few years, including DAVINCI, VERITAS, and EnVision. VERITAS and DAVINCI will be the first NASA spacecraft to explore Venus since the 1990s.