Defunct Soviet-era spacecraft falls into Indian Ocean

A long-defunct Soviet spacecraft has re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and fallen into the Indian Ocean, the Russian space authority said Saturday.

Cosmos-482 entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 09:24 Moscow time (0624 GMT) on Saturday, 560 km west of the Middle Andaman Island, and fell in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos said in a statement.

The spacecraft's descent was closely monitored by Russia's automated warning system for hazardous situations in near-Earth space, Roscosmos said.

Cosmos-482 was originally launched in the spring of 1972 as part of a Soviet mission to explore Venus. However, due to a malfunction, the probe failed to leave the Earth's orbit and remained in a high elliptical orbit, gradually spiraling closer to the planet over the past five decades.