But in the worst worst-case scenario, we don’t have any control. Instead, the station will crack through the atmosphere. Sure, many pieces will likely end up in the ocean, but some might hit people, possibly in a town or a city. The station could break apart across thousands of miles and multiple continents. This would be exceedingly hard to anticipate. As NASA puts it, “Calculating the probability of this penetration cascading into loss of deorbit capability has a very large range of variables, making predictions ineffective.”

This almost certainly won’t happen to the ISS. At the same time, it’s a far more extreme version of the only way an American space station has ever come down. In 1979, after years spent vacant in orbit, Skylab, the US’s first space station, started sinking toward the atmosphere, where it threatened to fall and drop molten spacecraft parts on Earth. At that point, NASA officials had to remotely wake up its computers and, with only limited control of the station, direct it over a location that would endanger the fewest humans.

In the months before, space agency officials were in frequent contact with the State Department, which disseminated the latest predicted trajectories to embassies across the world. In these situations, oops doesn’t cut it: When one of the Salyuts, a Soviet space station model, was deorbited a few decades ago, flaming bits were littered across Argentina, scaring people and requiring the deployment of at least a few firefighters, according to local newspaper reports.

The ISS is far bigger than either the Salyuts or Skylab. In an uncontrolled deorbit, pieces of debris “up to car and train size,” say experts on the official ISS space station advisory committee, will rain down from the sky. NASA confirms this would pose “a significant risk to the public worldwide.”

OK—the nightmare is over. Thus concludes my anxiety-ridden spiral. Here are the facts as they stand in 2026:

As far as WIRED can tell, no one has ever died because a piece of space station hit them. Some pieces of Skylab did fall on a remote part of Western Australia, and Jimmy Carter formally apologized, but no one was hurt. The odds of a piece hitting a populated area are low. Most of the world is ocean, and most land is uninhabited. In 2024, a piece of space trash that was ejected from the ISS survived atmospheric burn-up, fell through the sky, and crashed through the roof of a home belonging to a very real, and rightfully perturbed, Florida man. He tweeted about it and then sued NASA, but he wasn’t injured.

For this story, WIRED reviewed dozens of NASA documents, including backup plans and contingencies for emergencies, and spoke to more than a dozen people, including three astronauts who’ve visited the ISS, and no one seemed that freaked out. One astronaut said the most worrisome scenario that actively crossed his mind in orbit was getting a toothache. The ISS has had some emergencies, including a first-ever medical evacuation in January, but generally things have been remarkably stable. In fact, one of the most impressive things about the ISS is that nothing very dramatic has ever happened to it. No experiment has gone too haywire. It hasn’t been hit by an asteroid.

Last month, the Department of Justice released over 3 million documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. While the dumps shed light on Epstein’s own social circle and activities, they also provide a rare window into the inner workings of a federal investigation, including how tech companies like Google respond to government requests for information.

WIRED found several grand jury subpoenas addressed to Google in the DOJ’s most recent release, along with files that appear to be Google data produced about specific users and letters on Google letterhead responding to specific subpoena requests.

Google declined to comment on the specific documents included in the dumps, but spokesperson Katelin Jabbari said in a written statement that the company’s “processes for handling law enforcement requests are designed to protect users’ privacy while meeting our legal obligations. We review all legal demands for legal validity, and we push back against those that are overbroad, including objecting to some entirely.”

The documents show how much the government will sometimes attempt to obtain without a judge’s sign-off, how Google pushes back against requests that it says are beyond what’s required by law, and what types of information the company has turned over about its users.

Secret by Design

Subpoenas are normally shrouded in secrecy. A 2019 letter signed by the then US attorney for the Southern District of New York and addressed to Google’s legal department prohibited the company by law from revealing the letter’s existence to Epstein coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, the subject of the subpoena, for 180 days from the date of the order. The letter also instructed Google to alert prosecutors if it planned to tell Maxwell about the existence of the order after the 180 days were up, “in case the investigation remains ongoing and the order needs to be renewed.”

Even when not required by law, prosecutors requested Google’s silence. A 2018 letter instructing Google to preserve all emails (including those in draft and trash folders) and Google Drive content associated with four gmail accounts also requested that Google not disclose the existence of the letter to anyone, including the people who owned the accounts. The letter also requested that Google notify federal prosecutors if the company intended to make a disclosure, so the prosecutors could “obtain a non-disclosure order if necessary.”

JBL makes a mean Bluetooth speaker, and the brand’s Flip series has been my all-time favorite for multiple generations. The JBL Flip 7 is its best yet, with good sound, a travel-ready size, and subtle but effective upgrades over the previous two models in both sound and features. I love this speaker and its nearly indestructible design, and now it’s finally getting some good sales. Right now, you’ll find it for $50 off its $150 retail price, the lowest we’ve seen it yet.

I used the Flip 5 as my go-to audio companion at home and on the road for years. The Flip 7 is better, providing even clearer and more powerful sound to enhance everything from barbecue jams to dialog as I watch movies from my PC in the hot tub (what can I say, I like to multi-task!). The Flip’s design works great for the hot tub since it’s fully dunkable, and offers convenient controls for my slippery hands when I need to adjust the volume or pause the fun.

The Flip 7 offers some cool new features, including a new detachable loop that breaks away with the press of a button (just make sure you don’t lose it), upgraded IP68 dust and water resistance, and a new shockproof casing tested for three-foot drops. The Flip line has always been pretty drop-friendly, and I can personally attest to dropping this thing a lot with no ill effects.

JBL has also begun to add Auracast to its new speaker line, a future-looking feature that uses a new Bluetooth protocol for latency-free transmission of an infinite number of devices. Auracast is still new, but it’s an extremely promising technology, and currently lets you connect the Flip 7 with other JBL Auracast speakers in tandem. The only downside is that JBL has done away with its older PartyBoost feature, so you can only group the Flip 7 with newer speakers like the Charge 6 and Clip 5.

As far as sound quality goes, this is a more refined Flip, with minor upgrades to instrumental definition, noticeable in instruments like brass, strings, and vocals. It’s not a big change over the Flip 6, but it’s good to see improvement, and the speaker has lost some of the more aggressive touch that sometimes led to minor distortion in older models. Like virtually any Bluetooth speaker, it will still distort if you push it too hard, but I clocked it at over 75 dB in my review without any audible issues.

You’ll also get a bit more battery life this time around, going from 12 hours in previous models to 14 (depending on volume), so you can take it off the grid for a bit longer. You can even push that up to 16 hours with its new Playtime Boost mode, though that cuts out some bass.

It all adds up to a sweet little package. It’s my first recommendation when anyone asks me about a great portable speaker, offering the perfect compromise between size, sound, and durability. While it’s been bouncing up and down in price lately, now’s a great time to catch it at the lowest price we’ve seen yet.

Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.