LOFTID Heat Shield Recovered, Aboard Boat

A nighttime view of the deck of a boat, with the blunt-cone-shaped inflatable LOFTID heat shield being lifted by a crane onto the deck.
The LOFTID heat shield is lifted out of the water onto the deck of the recovery vessel.

Team members successfully retrieved the LOFTID heat shield from the Pacific Ocean on Thursday morning. With the heat shield on board, the recovery vessel will next head to retrieve LOFTID’s ejectable data module, which contains a backup of the demonstration data that is also stored on the heat shield.