In article , wrote:
to slow it down? It was going , what, about 25,000 MPH?

No, no braking burn -- beefing up the heatshield to take a bit more heat
used far less mass than rocket braking would have.

Or did it "crash" squarely enough into the atmosphere that it didn't
need to?

Nothing "crash" or "square" about it -- a carefully-controlled entry at a
very shallow angle, using body lift to shape the path and hold the capsule
down in the atmosphere until it had lost enough speed that it wasn't going
to skip back out.
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