The article does make mention of the need for one, and there's some discussion of heat and the need for *really* robust spacesuits - but nothing more than that, and the pic while romantic isn't very reassuring ... FINS ??

But it got me wondering if one could sort of "surf" into re-entry on a heatshield, and a google of "heatshield surfing" did retrieve this page from Strange Horizons. Sure enough it turns that NASA first thought of this as far back as the Mercury program in the early 60s:

The idea originally came about in a design study in the early '60s examining emergency rescue technology that could be developed for astronauts who run into trouble in orbit. In its original conception as MOOSE (Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment), it was designed as a small, easily storable means for a stranded astronaut to bail out of a space station in Low Earth orbit.

A space-suited astronaut would exit a station via an airlock and strap a 1.8 meter diameter elastomeric mold onto his back. Pulling a cord on an attached canister would fill the mold with rapidly hardening polyurethane foam, resulting in a large hemispherical heat shield that would mold itself around the contours of the back of the astronaut's body. Using a hand-held retro rocket, the astronaut would align himself for reentry (in the '60s it was assumed some simple helmet sights and radio contact with the Mission Control would help him find the correct reentry window) and use the hand-rocket to break orbit and send himself back toward Earth. Once in the lower atmosphere, the astronaut would use a parachute mounted on MOOSE's forward straps to initiate a soft landing.