Navy Divers Filmed Orion's Heat Shield From Below After Artemis II Came Home

Shortly after NASA's Artemis II mission splashed down on April 10, 2026, U.S. Navy divers captured underwater imagery of the Orion spacecraft's heat shield. The photographs are the visible end of a slower question: whether the thermal protection system did its job on reentry. NASA says the analysis that followed confirmed the heat shield performed as expected. For a spacecraft, that is the least dramatic and most necessary possible headline — the hardware that exists only to be destroyed did what it was built to do, and the imagery of it intact is the receipt.