Soon after Artemis II came down in the ocean on April 10, 2026, U.S. Navy divers took underwater photos of the heat shield on the bottom of the Orion capsule. The pictures gave engineers an early look at the hardware before it was lifted out of the water.
Over the following months, NASA studied whether the thermal protection system had protected the four astronauts and Orion's onboard systems from the intense heat of reentry. According to NASA, the detailed review confirmed that the shield did its job.
The question mattered a great deal. After the uncrewed Artemis I flight, engineers found that the heat shield had lost charred material in unexpected ways. That finding led NASA to change the reentry path for the first crewed mission.
