You can tell that Rover has been through it…

Its older cousin (Curiosity Rover) is still trekking on the other side of Mars, right now it is the evening of sol 4537 and the rover has had another busy day exploring Gale crater. It’s been exploring Gale since August 2012. Here’s the data/ stats after its most recent drive a few days ago :)

Hopefully Perseverance will still be trekking after a similar time on Mars

The Russian space agency (Roscosmos)

Released the following on their Telegram channel… (Translated from Russian)

The device “Cosmos-482” descended from orbit and fell into the ocean

Launched in 1972, the spacecraft “Cosmos-482” ceased to exist, descending from orbit and falling in the Indian Ocean

The convergence of the device was controlled by the means of the Automated Warning System of Danger Situations in Near-Earth Space.

In accordance with the calculations of specialists TsNIIMash (part of Roscosmos), the device entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 9:24 GMT 560 km west of the island of the Middle Andaman and fell in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.

The device was launched in the spring of 1972 to study Venus, but due to a malfunction of the upper stage remained in the high elliptical orbit of the Earth, gradually approaching the planet.

Gotta be a leak somewhere

Leaks are never a good thing, hopefully the backup has enough xenon to complete the mission

Probably picked up a nail.

I guess that’s a little better than picking up a hitchhiker ;)

It doesn’t look like there is even an estimate yet of what part of the globe it will hit

Too early to predict that accurately. Our upper atmosphere expands and contracts depending on the activity of the sun, there can be large daily changes. An expanding atmosphere with slow the craft and it will de-obit quicker. A contracting atmosphere will allow the craft to stay in orbit a little longer. IIRC they won’t have an accurate time or a better idea of the impact site until about a day before reentry. I guess some folk are saying there is only a chance of making it to the surface as they don’t know if it is still intact.

At least one of the ‘experts’ that I’ve read firmly believes it will reach the surface as he analyzed its light curves a while back. I’m going with his prediction as that thing was built to survive tougher conditions than an Earth reentry. Odds are high that it will land in the ocean, but if it stays intact and hits land, then it’ll make a new hole in any golf coarse that happened to be in its cross hairs ;)

News media will likely start to report on it, as it gets closer to May 9th :)

Watch this space :)

Extract from the Wiki entry: “Its landing module, which weighs 495 kilograms (1,091 lb), is highly likely to reach the surface of Earth in one piece as it was designed to withstand 300 G’s of acceleration and 100 atmospheres of pressure…”

That thing will make a mighty splash if it hits the ocean, either that or generate a good sized crater

The numbers of objects we have observed / plotted in the belt are likely dwarfed many fold by those not observed. So yes, there’s a lot to see in the Belt :)

It’s been bombarded by tiny super fast collisions.

When we consider that it’s about 5 miles (8 km) long and 2 miles (3.5 km) wide, then some of those craters took good hits. I assume any future interstellar craft would need some sort of force field or be armor plated to protect from it from such collisions.

Here’s a very quick and dirty 3D model from Doug Ellison posted on Sketchfab:

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/asteroid-dj-from-gif-a213e65bd25c484dab2e6c1d56d29a56

Credits: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL