Doomed Soviet satellite from 1972 will tumble uncontrollably to Earth next week — and it could land almost anywhere

An artist's illustration of a fireball entering the Earth's atmosphere at sunset.

A chunk from a 53-year-old Soviet spacecraft designed to land on Venus is set to cannonball back to Earth next weekend, and nobody knows where it might land.

The Kosmos 482 probe, made and launched by the U.S.S.R. in 1972, was built as part of the Venera program that collected data from Venus's hellish surface.