The Space Age past may come knocking on the world's door next week as the defunct Soviet Union's Kosmos 482 Venus lander from 1972 makes an unwelcome return home and is predicted to crash into the Earth's atmosphere around May 10.

The Soviet Union's failed Kosmos 482 Venus spacecraft is set to make a somewhat delayed reappearance as it slams into the Earth in the next few weeks. Between 1961 and 1984, the Soviet Union launched a series of space probes in order to study the second-closest planet to the Sun.

Kosmos 482 —originally launched on March 31, 1972, as part of the Soviet Union's ambitious Venera program to explore Venus—is expected to make a crash landing on Earth around May 9–10, 2025. Due to a rocket malfunction shortly after launch, the spacecraft never made it out of Earth's orbit.