Like I am not at all asking about simple, average, or conventional objects and orbits.

So let’s say the Sol system is a large valley of a gravity well. That means Earth is perched somewhere up the side of that valley. If I’m an interstellar object, I’m likely to be captured into an orbit but my vector is not as constrained to orbital norms. The question is about edge cases so all possible scenarios are relevant and there are no statistical simplifications.

As I enter the Sol system, I must travel down into the valley to intercept Earth. Obviously, if I do so on the down hill side of gravity, I am going to hit with tremendous velocity regardless of my interstellar velocity vector. But I can have any configuration of factors or composition too. I do not need to park in this crazy lemming’s yard as a whole object or even land softly. My only constraint is that I must put a rock on the ground without a big explosion. So let’s call that landing the world’s lightest car as a minimum, and doing so with less energy than a ton of TNT and hope this rat has a basement bunker or he’ll be riding the sunset clouds with Science Santa.

Instead of intersecting the Earth on the downward slope of the Sol gravity well, let’s go much deeper and graze Sol itself. Perhaps through ablation, perhaps through particle interaction, or perhaps through some breaking and shedding of materials I drop enough velocity to loop back up the Sol gravity well and into Earth’s vicinity.

Now, I am faced with a new substantial but much smaller gravity-valley. I could use Luna to slow me to a crawl when I cross cislunar space, but there is still a gravity chasm below me.

I am a conglomeration of materials. Perhaps I am a spinning contact binary, perhaps I have a planetesimal fragment once a magma chamber on an alien world with unusual fractional crystalization. Perhaps I have a pancake core of well fused pumice or scoria surrounded by other materials fused or not.

So perhaps I cannot descend from cislunar directly, but I have no constraint on my origin like some object assumed to be on the orbital plane of Sol. I can enter the system from any orientation and while elliptical dynamics are a statistical probability, this post question is about exceptions not statistical simplification.

So I am going to single shot this thing. As I fall into the gravity-valley, any means of slowing is possible. So let’s say I have an ideal shape to skip across the atmosphere and some composition capable of ablation without turning me into a bolide air burst. I’m able to travel abnormally deep into the atmosphere while ablating some unusual volcanic layer formed on my former anoxic stellar alien world of our galaxy. The energy builds to impart a spin as I enter deep into Earth’s atmosphere. As I reach perigee, forces within fracture and release an ultralight core fragment, a pancake shaped disc of an ultra low density pumice at the ideal moment to cancel considerable velocity. The rest of me that continues is irrelevant. I am now this ultra low density aerodynamic pancake released into the atmosphere. All I must do is get to the ground without more than a ton of TNT in energy.

For every rule; an exception. The post is a request for abstractive absurdity such as this. Perhaps this is still flawed. At some level, isn’t the theory of panspermia ultimately an assumption of such a scenario. It was a thought experiment for fun, and a litmus test of Lemmy’s overall engagement and Machiavellian spectrum in a random time slice. My offbeat sense of humor probably doesn’t help here, like calling la grange points listening to ZZ Top, or Barycenter Bary-the-narcissist – as a hint that I am not asking for anything normal, conventional, or basic, or at least that is how I thought of these. It is all for kicks and giggles with digital neighbors in the public commons anyways. So, thanks for responding.