Pluto has become the Butt Monkey of the solar system.
A specific case of Million To One Chance: the laws of probability are nothing compared to the power of Narrative Causality.
Alternatively, a spaceship having nothing to do with colonization experiences an emergency which forces its crew to land on a planet in an uncharted star system, and for some reason they never get rescued.
A human colony on another planet experiences a disaster which destroys its tech-base, and for some reason the rest of humanity never checks up on that colony with which it suddenly lost all contact.
In fact, there are not many substances that can withstand the heat generated, and most spacecraft have an ablative heat shield that burns off during re-entry, which requires the spacecraft to come in at a fairly precise angle. A fast-moving object compresses air before it, generating a lot of heat in the process.
The process of atmospheric entry can be compared to hitting treacle after a ride across ice (or, if you're American, suddenly hitting a wall of peanut butter during an easy downhill jog).
When it absolutely, positively, has to be destroyed on time, nothing beats your own remote-controlled, satellite-mounted laser cannon.