Unpublished Newswire

Look up. A Soviet space probe that has been trying to get to Venus for the past 53 years is about to give up and plummet back to Earth any day now. There’s no telling where it could land. Kosmos 482, to give the careening craft its official name, was launched from the Soviet Union on March 31, 1972, bound for Venus. Despite the current craze for missions to Mars, Venus was once a popular destination for space probes, although Earth’s track record was not stellar. Between 1961 and 1989, 37 attempts were made but only 22 were successful (less than 60 per cent). Failures included the...