[Moose4]

There's a period during re-entry where the ionization caused by the ship plowing through the upper atmosphere at thousands of mph causes radio transmissions to be disrupted. They don't get contact back until the shuttle slows down and gets out of the ionosphere. That's how it used to work, anyway, I guess it's still valid now.

}:-)4

[Publius6961]

There's a period during re-entry where the ionization caused by the ship plowing through the upper atmosphere at thousands of mph causes radio transmissions to be disrupted.

Things have progressed tremendously since the 70s.
I suspect that a hardened recorder will be incorporated in future flights that will have ablation protection and is recoverable, that will record all the important parameters during those 15-20 minutes.
Modern solid state memory makes this very easy to do.