Giant Soviet Satellite Expected to Plunge to Earth in Few Days

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —  A giant Soviet satellite is expected to plunge back into the atmosphere in the next few days, possibly as early as Sunday, but how much of it will reach Earth is unclear, officials and space experts said Friday.

Del Kindschi, a spokesman for U.S. Space Command near Colorado Springs, Colo., said he does not know how big the satellite is, but he confirmed that it is expected to re-enter the atmosphere in the next several days.

He said that as of Friday, the satellite was in orbit around Earth’s poles with a high point of just 105 miles and a low point of 92.58 miles. But a prediction on where the satellite will be when it re-enters the Earth’s atmospherewill not be available until shortly before the event.

“It’s a danger because this is a big piece of space hardware,” James Oberg, an expert on the Soviet space program, predicted in a telephone interview. “There’s a lot of metal that’s going to survive re-entry.”

The satellite, called Cosmos 1871, was launched Aug. 1, possibly by an SL-16 booster, into the type of polar orbit favored for spy satellites. The SL-16 can loft payloads weighing 15 tons into orbit and if Cosmos 1871 is in that weight range, it is the heaviest spacecraft ever placed in orbit around Earth’s poles.