The heat shield on NASA's Orion capsule (the crew vehicle used for lunar missions under the Artemis programme) appears to have performed well during the recent Artemis II crewed mission around the Moon, with commander Reid Wiseman describing it as looking "fantastic" after astronauts inspected it following splashdown. Concerns had lingered since the 2022 Artemis I uncrewed test flight, when chunks of heat shield material several centimetres wide had broken away — caused by trapped gases expanding inside the shield, which was not porous enough to allow them to escape. For Artemis II, NASA adjusted the capsule's re-entry angle to reduce stress on the shield, and this time astronauts found only surface wear with no missing material, though NASA says a full technical inspection is still to come.