The last of the ablative shielding on the lifepod burned away, along with one of the forward panels in the nose.  This altered the trajectory of the pod's decline...sent it tumbling in a way that would have done unfortunate things to Natsuko were she still awake to feel it!  Instead, it probably saved her life as instead of plowing directly into the apartment building ahead, it cleared one wall of the structure by less than three meters and dropped into a (mostly) empty parking lot, then bounced to finally blow through a wall and impact on the local high school's athletic field.<br/><br/>The resulting trench was long and shallow, with the majority of the pod's external structure flying apart before the internal passenger cage came to rest on its side, venting the tranq gas to the native air of this strange planet.