Shuttle in its last days had antennas that protruded outside the plasma just enough for telemetry. Apollo and Artemis reentry are also direct entry from Lunar-Earth transfer orbit using ablative heat shields, so the plasma would be hotter and thicker than suborbital Starship shots with Shuttle style ceramic tiles.

I'm pretty sure it did not stick anything through the plasma sheet- that is impossible. You would eithe melt the thing or just shift the plasma sheet a bit. It forms as air is compressed on contact, simple as that.

What IIRC was actually done was that some antennas were placed on the back of the shuttle & its size was big enough that the plasma bubble would not fully envelope it - it would be open up to space. And that antenna on the back would communicate with TDRS satellites through this gap, enabling contact through the whole re-entry.

Starship does basically the same, just with Starlink satellites instead of TDRS.