Reentry is just that chaotic. Atmospheric drag is the main determining factor, and the atmosphere at high levels is thin, but not particularly flat, and diffic

Reentry is just that chaotic. Atmospheric drag is the main determining factor, and the atmosphere at high levels is thin, but not particularly flat, and difficult to measure. Add in the fact that orbital objects move at ridiculous speeds, and the errors quickly add up. > The batteries, nine in total, were released on 11 January 2021 and will undergo a natural reentry, which is now predicted for around 18:56 CET on 8 March +/- 0.4 days. Half a day of uncertainty! This was a day before reentry! https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/Reentry_of_International_Space_Station_ISS_batteries_into_Earth_s_atmosphere https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/Reentry_of_Int... The batteries from this incident are typically returned to Earth in a controlled manner via a cargo spacecraft, but a failed launch required an alternative plan. > The uncontrolled disposal of the pallet, however, was not part of the original plan. It was made necessary by a disrupted spacewalking schedule following the failed launch of a Soyuz rocket in 2018, which forced NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to make an emergency landing in the Kazakh steppe. This event led to a backlog in the disposal of such equipment. Normally, old batteries would be placed inside an HTV and jettisoned from the ISS to burn up on re-entry. https://gizmodo.com/massive-iss-cargo-pallet-reentry-earth-march-2024-1851317508 https://gizmodo.com/massive-iss-cargo-pallet-reentry-earth-m...