4 ms·
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
by orbital-decay 2y 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 https://epizodyspace.ru/01/2u/solnthe/ams/v-8/v-8.html
- renhanxue 2y agoMarco 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 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4384/1 [1]: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reentry.html https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-...