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The sky is falling (yet again)

Hide yer women-folk and children; get the animals in the barn; the sky is falling.

Yes, once again I am able to roll out this perenial title for the column because, once again, the sky really is falling.

This time, the heavens are about to return a piece of space tech that we threw at them way back in the 1970s.

One of Russia's Venus-bound Venera missions which failed to escape earth's orbit over half a century ago is about to plunge through the atmosphere and impact the surface of our planet some time in the next few days; and we don't know where it'll hit.

The worrying thing about this re-entry is that the craft itself isn't just a frail piece of space junk that will burn up over our heads. It's actually going to survive the fall because it was originally designed to withstand the harsh conditions associated with penetrating the Venusian atmosphere at great speed.

As a result of this robust design, Kosmos 482 (this name given to the probe only after it got stuck in earth-orbit) will arrive largely intact and with a significant amount of kinetic energy -- enough to cause a lot of damage if it hits in a populated area.

At almost 500Kg in weight and being made of pretty tough alloys, K482 poses a very real threat to man or beast (hence the instructions at the top of today's column).

Fortunately for us, the chances of it actually smashing into a populated area is pretty low -- given that the majority of the earth's surface is actually ocean. As a related aside, I found this Daily Mail story amusing this morning:

'This is scary': People are freaking out after seeing Earth from THIS angle

However, regardless of the odds, there is still a chance that this piece of falling space junk could create mayhem and wreak havoc if it were to land in a densely populated urban area so I think it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the predicted impact point as this becomes more accurately refined nearer the event (potentially over the weekend).

Perhaps a more worring hint as to the future of falling space junk can be found in This Space.com story which cheerfully advises that "With the first generation of Starlink, we can expect about 2 tonnes (2.2 tons) of dead satellites reentering Earth's atmosphere daily" and since each weighs about 260Kg, odds are that some of that debris will hit the earth's surface from time to time.

Of course this makes a huge mockery of the way that (at least in New Zealand) tiny 20g toy drones are regulated as if they were an existential threat to mankind and should never be flown over anyone's head or property. Talk about mopping up the spilt drinks on the bar of the Titanic while an iceberg smashes through the hull!

So now I'll carefully polish the title of this colum, wrap it in tissue and place it in a ziplock bag with a pouch of dessicant so that it's perfectly preserved for the next time I need to use it -- which I suspect won't be too far away.

Enjoy your weekend and maybe wear a hard-hat.

Carpe Diem folks!

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