Out-of-control spacecraft that could've hit the UK has 'probably crashed' now but no one knows where

You might have heard about the chunk of spaceship that's over 50 years old which was hurtling back down to Earth after it failed to escape the planet's orbit.

Referred to as Kosmos 482, this chunk of spacecraft comes from a probe that the Soviet Union wanted to send to Venus in the 70s, but never really managed to leave home and spent the next few years swirling around the place doing the same thing over and over again before the inevitable crash.

Nobody knew exactly where this thing was going to land, but we knew it'd be somewhere between the south of England and the Falkland Islands.

AKA, 52 degrees north latitude and 52 degrees south latitude.

As for when, that was something we had a clearer picture on as experts predicted that it would be some time today (10 May).

This is the part of the UK the spacecraft could have hit (Getty Stock Image/LADbible)

Given the speed the spacecraft was going and the variation in possible time and area it could have landed it was very hard to predict with any accuracy exactly where it would hit.

Experts now think that the chunk of Kosmos 482 has probably crashed back down to Earth.

The little spaceship that couldn't was having its progress tracked by experts to gain a better idea of when we could expect this thing to come down.

Yesterday (9 May) they predicted that it would come down some time around 8:37am CEST (an hour ahead of UK time), give or take a few hours.

Radar systems in Germany picked up the debris moving at 08:04am CEST this morning, but did not spot it at 09:32 CEST, leading experts to conclude that it's most likely crashed by now.

The only problem is nobody knows where exactly it has landed.

It has likely landed somewhere in this area, so probably the sea then (ESA)

It could have plopped down in the sea, it could have landed in some spot in the middle of nowhere and not been spotted or it could be in any number of places.

Had it hit someone or something around human beings we'd likely have noticed by now, and many experts were reckoning that it'd come down in a body of water which means we may never know exactly where it was.

Just think of it, being built to make it all the way to Venus but failing in that goal only to circle the Earth for more than five decades before dropping down harmlessly on the planet it set off from.

Kosmos 482 is certainly not the most accomplished spacecraft.