This scene reminded me of the end of a Ray Bradbury short story, "Kaleidoscope", from 1949. (A web search showed that others also thought of that story when witnessing Hayabusa's return, so I guess I don't get originality points. :) In the story, a rocket ship ruptures and spills its spacesuited crew in all directions. They only have time to make a last few comments about their lives to each other before flying apart beyond radio range. Hollis, the protagonist, alone amongst them is falling toward Earth. The story's end follows, so I'm treating it as a spoiler:
They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the words of God spoken and vibrating in the starred deep. There went the captain to the Moon; there Stone with the meteor swarm; there Stimson; there Applegate toward Pluto; there Smith and Turner and Underwood and all the rest, the shards of the kaleidoscope that had formed a thinking pattern for so long, hurled apart. And I? thought Hollis. What can I do? Is there anything I can do now to make up for a terrible and empty life? If only I could do one good thing to make up for the meanness I collected all these years and didn't even know was in me! But there's no one here but myself, and how can you do good all alone? You can't. Tomorrow night I'll hit Earth's atmosphere. I'll burn, he thought, and be scattered in ashes all over the continental lands. I'll be put to use. Just a little bit, but ashes are ashes and they'll add to the land. He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everything was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about. When I hit the atmosphere, I'll burn like a meteor. "I wonder," he said, "if anyone'll see me?"
The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed, "Look, Mom, look! A falling star!" The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois. "Make a wish," said his mother. "Make a wish."