• A Soviet spacecraft that failed to launch to Venus is set to fall back to Earth in the next week.
• The Kosmos 482 capsule was built for Venus's brutal atmosphere, so it will likely survive Earth's.
• The capsule is unlikely to hit people or property, but there's a good chance of a huge fireball.

A Soviet spacecraft that stalled on its way to Venus is about to fall back to Earth, space-debris trackers say, and nobody knows where it might land.

Trackers think the object that's rapidly losing altitude in Earth's orbit is the Venus entry capsule from the Soviet Union's Kosmos 482 mission. That means it's a three-foot-wide, half-ton, titanium-encased sphere that was built to withstand a brutal plunge to the surface of Venus.

Since Venus's atmosphere is nearly 100 times denser than Earth's and its surface is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, this spacecraft is built tough.

It's probably strong enough to survive the fall back to Earth without burning up in our atmosphere, according to Patricia Reiff, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University.

"It has a heat shield and it is also more dense than a lot of the normal space debris," Reiff told Business Insider. "The odds are very, very high that it will fall harmlessly to Earth, but there is that small percentage and so we certainly want to be alert."

When, where, and how big the fireball will be

Kosmos 482 was the last of a series of probes the Soviet Union launched to Venus in the 1960s and 70s. This one never made it out of Earth's orbit due to an engine malfunction.

The Venus entry capsule is the final piece of Kosmos 482 that's still hanging around. A large module from the mission and the upper stage of its rocket both fell into Earth's atmosphere uneventfully in the 1980s.

Based on its current trajectory, experts expect the spacecraft will descend so low that it will succumb to the drag of Earth's atmosphere and plummet down sometime between May 7 and 13.

It's too early to know where the Venus capsule will reenter Earth's atmosphere, much less where it will land.

Most of the planet is water, so it's highly unlikely that the capsule will strike people or property.

"I expect it'll have the usual one-in-several-thousand chance of hitting someone," Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks notable objects in orbit, wrote in a blog post in April. He added that, although the spacecraft is dense, it has no nuclear materials on board.

"No need for major concern, but you wouldn't want it bashing you on the head," he added.

As the capsule descends lower into the atmosphere, Reiff said NASA's orbital-debris trackers will be able to calculate the last few orbits it will make before falling. Then they'll have a range of places it might land.

The spacecraft's plummet will be visible to anyone nearby as a big, beautiful fireball, according to Reiff.

"A typical meteor is like a grain of sand. A normal fireball might be a marble. This is a meter across, so it's big," Reiff said. "It should be spectacular."

• The Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace is flying its first moon mission, called Blue Ghost.
• New photos show how far the spacecraft is traveling for its moon landing attempt on March 2.
• Photos like these are rare since NASA ended the Apollo program 52 years ago, but a new era is beginning.

A new mission to land on the moon is beaming back stunning photos that put our world into perspective.

Look closely at the above image. There are two worlds in the photo. The moon is a tiny dot in the distance, visible below Earth.

The photo comes from the uncrewed Blue Ghost spacecraft, built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace. The mission is en route to descend to the lunar surface on March 2.

Success would make Firefly the second private company to ever land on the moon, just one year after a historic touchdown by Intuitive Machines.

The mission is a harbinger of a new era in space, where companies race to the moon to build the infrastructure for a future economy of lunar tourism, mining, and exploration.

Photos from the Blue Ghost spacecraft

The below image, which Firefly released on February 12, shows Earth reflecting off the spacecraft's solar panel. Believe it or not, the moon is in this photo, too. See it?

On its way to the moon, the spacecraft has crossed over 715,000 miles in space.

As it crept closer to the moon, the spacecraft conducted a critical engine burn to insert itself into lunar orbit, where it's set to hang out until it's time for landing.

A few hours after the burn, the spacecraft sent its first up-close images of the moon.

"I almost started crying because we're finally at the moon," Ray Allensworth, the director of Firefly's spacecraft program, told Business Insider.

Looking at the photos is "really surreal," she said.

Blue Ghost has 10 experiments and plans to capture a lunar sunset

Blue Ghost is carrying 10 experiments and instruments for NASA, including a system to collect samples of moon dust and a radiation-tolerant computer that will test whether the technology can survive the extreme radiation on the moon.

If the mission successfully lands on the moon, its payloads are set to operate for about 14 days, which is a complete lunar day.

If all goes to plan, one of its final acts will be to capture the lunar sunset, studying how the sun causes moon dust to levitate, a mysterious phenomenon observed by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.

Until then, Blue Ghost is orbiting the moon while its human operators prepare for landing.

Photos from fresh new spacecraft headed to the moon have been scarce since NASA ended the Apollo program, with no US moon landings since 1972 until last year's Intuitive Machines mission. These images could become common again, though, if Firefly has its way.

"Ultimately, our goal is that we're going to the moon at least yearly and hopefully increase that cadence over time," Allensworth said.