As LOFTID reentered Earth's atmosphere and reached nearly 2,700°F, the extreme heat caused gases around it to ionize and form plasma. On the right, the images from the center body cameras became extremely bright in the visible spectrum, while the Earth is visible on infrared cameras as the vehicle rotated.

This was a keystone event for us, and the short answer is: It was highly successful," said LOFTID Project Manager Joe Del Corso. "Our assessment of LOFTID concluded with the promise of what this technology may do to empower the exploration of deep space."The LOFTID team recently held a post-flight analysis assessment of the flight test at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Their verdict? BRITTANY LUSE, BYLINE: When Elise moved to South Korea in 2015 to set up the first NPR Seoul bureau, her reporting focus was quite clear - a pretty busy time for geopolitics and a lot of missile provocations from North Korea. But in the midst of geopolitical tension, she noticed that at every street corner, in every magazine, TV show, and even from other people, that there was an expectation she wasn't meeting. LUSE: A few years later, she found she was still thinking about Korea's vision of beauty. After exhaustive research and many revelations, she brings us this new book which lays out some pretty high stakes for beauty. As fans of Korean culture travel to Korea, they're also seeking out aesthetic procedures. But the choices and messaging can be overwhelming. Former NPR Seoul Bureau Chief Elise Hu, host of " TED Talks Daily," explores the Korean quest for aesthetic perfection in her new book " Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture From the K-Beauty Capital," which was released on May 23. Interwoven with her own experience as a Chinese American adjusting to life in Seoul, she's written a book that explores Korean beauty in the political, historical, and financial context that's turned the industry into a global power player. From an infrared camera aboard the recovery ship, this video shows the parachute deployment and splashdown just over the horizon. The preflight animation is provided on the right for comparison.

LUSE: This book is full of interesting dives into fixations on legs, government-driven beauty and the technological gaze. I was regularly pausing to absorb what I had just read. And for those of you who think that none of this has anything to do with you, Elise has convinced me that a lot of the intense beauty pressure is headed here, if it hasn't already arrived for some of us. PS: Ever since I was in Korea last year, my social media algorithms constantly serve up K-beauty or hair procedures. The hairline tattoos and powders, the styling of baby hair. My takeaway is that there's no pore Koreans won't touch for improvement. It seems exhausting. Do you think it's that way for people who live there? No matter where you live, people make judgments based on how you look. Those judgments are a little different in different places, as one of our longtime colleagues discovered when she moved. NPR's Elise Hu found Korean beauty standards so revealing she wrote a book called "Flawless" and talked with Brittany Luse of It's Been A Minute. POPSUGAR: What made you dive so deeply into Korean beauty? You could have written on this topic without delving into the history or the politics associated with it, so why did you explore it the way you did?

Origin of flawless

HU: Korean women accurately perceive that failing to be thin or failing to be beautiful will literally cost them. Korea is still a place where you're encouraged to attach a headshot to a resume, where passport photos come photoshopped by default. There's also - the hypermodernity of Korea, I think, really plays a huge role. So South Korea being very forward in developing technology is another reason why visuals matter a lot - right? - because our projections, our digital avatars, supersede our physical bodies because that's the way that we are seen and we want to be seen. And you can be seen all the time.

EH: There's also a whole trend and tourism industry around women who go to Korea to look for the K-drama archetype of a sweet, gentle Korean man. Korean men do groom more than the average man in, say, the US, but there is just as much diversity of shapes and shades and sizes in Korea. That diversity just doesn't get exported in all the promotion and marketing of Hallyu (the Korean cultural wave). The pressure to look a certain way perhaps makes it seem as if most cosmopolitan Koreans look "good" or more presentable than what you'd see on the streets of Los Angeles.

Due to the success of the LOFTID tech demo, NASA announced under its Tipping Point program that it would partner with ULA to develop and deliver the "next size up," a larger 12-meter HIAD aeroshell for recovering the company's Vulcan engines from low Earth orbit for reuse. LOFTID splashed down in the Pacific Ocean several hundred miles off the east coast of Hawaii and only about eight miles from the recovery ship's bow—almost exactly as modeled. A crew got on a small boat and retrieved and hoisted LOFTID onto the recovery ship. HU: And for a woman would be weighing under 50kg, so 110 pounds, having at least a C cup bra. Cosmetic surgeons will say the ideal beauty - the chin part of the face is slightly smaller, and so that helped popularize the jawline or V-line surgery that would shave down the jaws to make more of a heart-shaped jawline. There's all these ratios that are applied in the same way that we apply to, you know, nonhuman things. When I was in Korea last year, a trip to a skin clinic was on the to-do list of every Korean American I met. Nonsurgical procedures like Botox or lasers to treat hyperpigmentation (think sun damage or acne scars) are a fraction of the price they are stateside. So are injections that aren't even available here, like Rejuran (derived from salmon DNA), that claim to reverse aging.