Good point. I guessed the body crashed with the ship then.
Technically, why wouldn't it? Shepard's ejection couldn't create that much of a velocity difference, if Normandy crashed so should Shepard.
And finally, even assuming there was a reason to have Shepard die, did he/she have to *crash* into a planet. Why not simply have Shepard's corpsicle and Normandy's wreck circling the planet in orbit prior to recovery of the former?
So what's the reason? Because the ability to say "I think Mass Effect is a pretty cool guy. Eh resruects from charred blot on a glacier and doesnt afraid of anything." doesn't quite cut it.
Didn't they find bits from the Columbia astronauts and when Challenger's crew hit the sea they were still intact enough to have had detailed autopsies done that suggested they were still alive at the point of impact(though unconscious)? Now it's a 1 in a million chance that something like the revival of Shepard could be possible, but when taking into account future tech and the 'luck' that all heroes in all heroic tales have(meaning that the hero will inevitably on more than one occasion be on the right side of such fantastical odds), then I don't see this resurrection as being all that improbable. Of all the myriad of gripes I have with ME, this is actually quite low on the list.
Don't know about Columbia, but Challenger wasn't reentering, its cockpit stayed pretty much intact right until impact and crew being alive was deduced from oxygen consumption as there were barely any bits left and even less found.
As for Columbia, replace damaged heat shield with shep's damaged suit and realize that there was much less Shepard to ablate than there was the shuttle (in terms of mass/heat capacity).
