🚀 Molniya-M | 🛰 Kosmos 482 (Venera Venus Lander)

Launch date: March 31, 1972 04:02 UTC

Payload: Kosmos 482 (Venera Venus Lander)

Location: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Soviet Union

Vehicle: Molniya-M

Kosmos 482, a Soviet Venus descent probe launched in 1972 as part of the Venera program aboard a Molniya-M rocket from Baikonur, failed to escape Earth orbit due to a rocket anomaly. Predicted and later confirmed to have reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean on May 10, 2025 after 53 years in orbit, the nearly 500 kg, titanium-shelled lander survived as legacy space debris. The reentry, widely tracked and analyzed by international agencies, ESA, and satellite watchers, presented extremely low public risk due to the probe’s robust design. The event has prompted renewed discussion of legacy and future space junk, broader reentry environmental issues, and the historical role of the Venera missions, with extensive media coverage, risk assessments, and live tracking.

Site 1, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan

Site 1, often referred to as Gagarin’s Start, is the oldest and most iconic launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Commissioned in the late 1950s, it was the site of the world’s first human spaceflight on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit aboard Vostok 1. Since then, it has served as the primary pad for crewed missions to low Earth orbit, including those to the International Space Station.

Over decades, Site 1 has seen the launch of numerous historic missions and a variety of vehicles, notably the R-7 family and Soyuz-2 rockets. Although its utilization has decreased due to the construction of newer pads and modernization efforts, it remains a symbol of the dawn of human space exploration and a site of significant heritage in both Soviet and Russian space history.