The ninth sign's image, a dwelling-place in the heavens falling with a great crash, now has a date, a contractor, and a price tag: the International Space Station is scheduled for a controlled fall around 2030.
Documented
The deorbit file
The ISS masses about 430 tonnes and cannot meet the U.S. 1-in-10,000 public-risk standard in an uncontrolled reentry, so NASA selected SpaceX's U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, a stretched Dragon with 46 Draco thrusters. Plan of record: vehicle complete 2028, launch mid-2029, last crew off about six months before the end, final burn driving the wreck into a remote South Pacific footprint around the turn of 2031. A 2027 review can still extend operations.
Assessment: Documented: contract, GAO report, and NASA transition plan are all public.
Stories
The first fall
It already happened once. Skylab, America's first station, disintegrated on July 11, 1979, showering debris across Western Australia around Balladonia and Esperance. The Shire of Esperance fined NASA A$400 for littering; a radio fundraiser finally paid it in 2009. Mir followed in March 2001, steered into the same ocean graveyard. The sky has been dropping houses for fifty years.
Assessment: Documented: reentry records, recovered debris, and the paid fine.
Interesting claims
The calendar prophecy
The sign as printed speaks only of a dwelling-place in the heavens falling. Skylab fell sixteen years after the book printed it; the ISS fall is scheduled, insured, and contracted. A prophecy fulfilled by a procurement process is indistinguishable from a calendar entry, which is the interesting claim: the image is durable enough to fit any decade with a space station in it.
Assessment: Interesting claims: the rhyme between text and event is real; the causality runs from engineering schedule, not vision.
Sources and further reading
NASA press release, June 26, 2024: SpaceX selected for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, total potential value $843 million
NASA, International Space Station Transition Plan FAQ: the 1-in-10,000 public-risk standard requiring controlled reentry
GAO-26-107805 (June 2026): the plan of record, final burn at the end of 2030 or early 2031
Benson and Compton, Living and Working in Space: A History of Skylab, NASA SP-4208 (1983), the July 11, 1979 reentry
Shire of Esperance A$400 littering fine against NASA, paid April 2009, Esperance Express
Frank Waters, Book of the Hopi (1963), the ninth sign's falling dwelling-place
Worth asking
A prophecy printed in 1963 predicted a falling sky house; one fell in 1979 and the next fall is already on the calendar; is that fulfillment or just housekeeping?