So the burn from New Caird ’s engine had done its job. It had depressed the ship’s "nose," which was pointed backward, and prevented the stern, currently pointed forward, from digging in. They’d grazed the atmosphere with the shard’s broad side and gotten a nice skip out of it—a bounce that might’ve saved their lives. But once the shard began to rotate, it was difficult to make it stop, and now it had gone too far. The nose was pointed too steeply downward, the nozzle bell was aimed up toward space.