The result was stunning photos capturing a perspective rarely, if ever, seen previously. One image shared<\/a> by NASA revealed the scene after splashdown:<\/p>\n Photo Credit: U.S. Navy<\/p>\n Aside from their beauty and the sense of mystery they evoke, the images also serve a practical purpose. They will allow experts to examine the performance of the vehicle’s heat shield at the time of the crew’s ocean landing.<\/p>\n In addition to capturing the scene from underwater, NASA filmed it from above.<\/p>\n “Airborne imagery of Orion’s crew module also was obtained during reentry and will be reviewed in the coming weeks,” NASA said<\/a>. “The imagery will provide insight into the timing of when minimal char loss occurred as well as other heat-shield data.”<\/p>\n The heat shield protects the crew upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. For years, it has been one of the top concerns for the Artemis mission.<\/p>\n During the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in 2022, the heat shield sustained major damage.<\/p>\n However, early indications seemed to show that the heat shield on Artemis 2’s Orion capsule performed well.<\/p>\n “The ceramic tiles on the upper conical backshell of the crew module also performed as expected,” NASA said.<\/p>\n The heat shield is not the only challenge facing NASA as it seeks to return humans to the moon in 2028.<\/p>\n Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin recently suffered a major setback when its New Glenn rocket failed to deliver a commercial satellite to the intended orbit.<\/p>\n The New Glenn was slated to play a major role in the upcoming Artemis 3 mission, but the Federal Aviation Administration has grounded the rocket pending further investigation into the mission’s failure.<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When one thinks about spaceflight, underwater photography is typically not one of the first things that come to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[504,263227,74889,718,79,91974],"class_list":{"0":"post-605423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-artemis","9":"tag-crew-module","10":"tag-heat-shield","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-underwater-photography"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/caf3077391f47a2cc5168d3dc0697a7f.jpeg\"\/)
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