> 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 (H-II Transfer Vehicle) and jettisoned from the ISS to burn up on re-entry.
> However, in late 2018, an HTV departed without this battery pallet due to the rescheduled spacewalks. As the battery replacement mission continued, and with no more HTVs of the old design expected to arrive (they are being replaced by the HTV-X cargo spacecraft), the decision was made to jettison the pallet independently.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39636991
Also some perhaps important context:
> 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 (H-II Transfer Vehicle) and jettisoned from the ISS to burn up on re-entry.
> However, in late 2018, an HTV departed without this battery pallet due to the rescheduled spacewalks. As the battery replacement mission continued, and with no more HTVs of the old design expected to arrive (they are being replaced by the HTV-X cargo spacecraft), the decision was made to jettison the pallet independently.
https://gizmodo.com/massive-iss-cargo-pallet-reentry-earth-m...