system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If I threw something straight down from the ISS, would it re-enter the atmosphere or stay in orbit?
gpt
In all likelihood, no.  
The object would have a lower orbit closer to where you threw it, but it would have a higher orbit on the opposite side of the planet.  
You would have to throw it REALLY REALLY hard to get it into the atmosphere.  
Your best bet is to throw it backwards, but that would still be very fast.  
The ISS orbits at 7.66 km/s, you would need to get that thing going at about 1 km/s relative to the station to get it to de-orbit.  
A Soyuz spacecraft has to turn its rockets on for  4 minutes and 21 seconds to get back to earth, so you can see that's alot of speed.    
That being said, even at 400km up the ISS is still getting drag from earth's atmosphere.  
It's not a lot, but the ISS descends about 50-100 m every day due to this. The ISS has to be reboosted every so often, your object won't be reboosted. As it get's lower and lower in orbit, the drag increases. Eventually it will fall to earth.