The first faces Artemis II mission astronauts will see when they splashdown in the Pacific Ocean next year after circling the moon will be those of San Diego Navy divers — and those crews are already training for the mission.
Officials from NASA, the Navy and Air Force spoke at Naval Base San Diego Wednesday after returning from sea on the amphibious transport dock John P. Murtha, where crews launched and recovered a mock-up of the Orion spacecraft.
"During this underway test we validated the procedures needed to safely recover the Artemis II Astronauts and the Orion spacecraft after splashdown," said Lili Villarreal, NASA's landing and recovery director at Wednesday's news conference.
A test model of the Orion crew module sat in the well deck of the Murtha. Over the last several days, the Murtha's crew, Navy divers from Coronado's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Expeditionary Support Unit 1 and aircrews from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23 practiced the recovery operation.
Navy dive units have expertise in recompression treatment, which Astronauts could require upon returning from space, said Senior Chief Ryan Crider.
"We conduct recompression chamber operations all over the world," said Crider, the command master diver of EODESU 1. "From day one of being a diver we are taught all kinds of rigging and recovery procedures. We know how to handle a lot of unpredictable situations and we know how to handle them with calm and ease."
Artemis II is scheduled to fly to the moon and back early in 2024, Villarreal said, but it's just the first step in learning to live in deep space.
"Artemis is all about going back to the moon and staying on the moon," she said. "Artemis III will be landing on the moon with the human lander that Space X is currently building. Eventually, we're going to have a gateway around the moon so that we can continue to live near the moon and continue to go land (there)."
Artemis II will be the first manned flight to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
