Asteroids around Venus, shown in the background above during a 2012 transit, are difficult to track because they fall inside Earth's orbit and are obscured by the sun's glare. Photograph by NASA/SDO ...

The hardware was lofted in the spring of 1972 to study Venus, but due to a malfunction of its rocket's upper stage, it remained in a high elliptical orbit around Earth, gradually closing in on our ...

Launched in 1972 by the Soviet Union, the spacecraft known as Kosmos 482 was part of a series of missions bound for Venus. But this one never made it out of orbit around Earth, stranded there by a ...

Now set to launch no earlier than 2027, the telescope is designed to discover 90% of asteroids and comets that are 460 feet in diameter or larger and come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.

Here’s how it works. A mock-up of the Soviet Union's Venera 7 probe, similar to Kosmos 482, a Venus lander is expected to crash back to Earth on or around May 10, 2025. (Image credit: NASA) ...