Space and Astronomy News for the 10th of May 2025

Russian Komsos 428 is about to return to Earth - and not in a good way

One of the big space news items this week is the expected crash landing later today of the Soviet era Kosmos 428 spacecraft. 

This was originally launched on a Molniya 8K78M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the 31st of March 1972. The Russian Soviet space program had an early focus on exploring Venus which has some unique challenges compared to landing on the Moon or even Mars. The atmospheric pressure at the surface on Venus is over 90 times greater than at sea level on Earth, with a temperature more 450 degrees C, due to it being closer to the Sun and a massive runaway greenhouse effect. 

Despite these extreme conditions, the Russians managed to land successfully on Venus and even broadcast some images from the surface. Sadly, Kosmas 428 was not a mission that even made it out of extended Earth orbit. During the burn to send the probe towards Venus, the multi-part booster partially failed and the rocket disintegrated. Two parts of the spacecraft fell towards Earth and landed near New Zealand a few days later. What is thought to be the main probe only received enough of an increase in speed to put it into an extended orbit, but did not have enough to escape Earth's gravity. It's remained there since, with its orbit slowly decaying. 

It's now predicted to impact the Earth this Saturday 10th May 2025 in the afternoon Sydney time. Even this close to impact, there's still a large degree of uncertainty about when and where it will land.

A model of the Venera-4, very similar to the lander due to impact the Earth this weekend. Image via Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics

Will it survive a journey through the Earth's atmosphere? Won't it burn up?

There's a lot of space junk whizzing above our heads with items ranging from small nuts and bolts or scraps of metal falling to Earth every day, sometime producing a quick flash much like a "shooting star". Even much larger pieces rarely make it through the heat of re-entry intact. 

Kosmos 428 is a different critter. 

The lander was designed to enter the much denser and hotter atmosphere of Venus. It's unlikely to be bothered too much by the journey through our own thinner and cooler atmosphere. It's basically an armour plated ball that will land at several thousand kms per hour. The chances of it causing damage to property is very remote however. 

NASA Receives the Artemis II Spacecraft 

Earlier this week, NASA received the Orion crew module for the Artemis II mission. 

Image via Lockhead Martin

This is the first time NASA has been in possession of a spacecraft destined to take humans to the Moon since 1972 when all the "Moon walkers" including Neil Armstrong and original Apollo designers and engineers such as Wernher von Braun were still alive. 

The Artemis II mission is now due to launch in 2026 and its flightpath is a loop around the Moon on a free-return trajectory. There are no plans for Artemis II to enter Lunar orbit as was achieved by the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 and by Apollo 10 in 1969.  NASA's position is the Artemis III mission slated for 2027 will be the return to the Moon's surface. Given the delays in the program and cuts to NASA's budget, this date might change. 

SPHEREx starts mapping the Universe

Another space telescope, Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explore or SPHEREx to its friends, has commenced its two year mission of cataloguing some 450 million galaxies and 100 stars in the Milky Way.

Image via NASA

This image of an emission nebula was released this week and marks the first patch of sky captured by SPHEREx.  Over the next couple of years it will take more than 3,600 images per day, with each of its six different detectors each taking 600. These are combined into a single exposure. The mission aims to probe the origins of the Universe and more locally, investigate the ingredients to life in the Milky Way. The whole spacecraft moves after each imaging run, rather than the instruments moving. 

This video shows how SPHEREx captures the sky in different wavelengths.

“Thanks to the hard work of teams across NASA, industry, and academia that built this mission, SPHEREx is operating just as we’d expected and will produce maps of the full sky unlike any we’ve had before,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“This new observatory is adding to the suite of space-based astrophysics survey missions leading up to the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Together with these other missions, SPHEREx will play a key role in answering the big questions about the universe we tackle at NASA every day.”

Cheers,

Earl White 

BINTEL

10th May 2025