Meet the US Navy divers who welcomed the Artemis 2 astronauts home from the moon

Space.com profiled the Navy divers who helped recover the Artemis II crew after the mission returned from its lunar flyby.

Recovery operations are a visible but operationally critical part of crewed deep-space missions, linking spacecraft landing, crew safety, medical handoff, and mission closeout.

For Artemis, splashdown is not the end of the mission until the crew is secured, checked, and transferred out of the spacecraft environment. Divers, recovery ships, medical teams, and NASA personnel all sit inside that handoff.

The operational lesson is useful because future Artemis missions will add more mission complexity before reaching the same Earth-return moment. Recovery readiness has to scale with the program, even when the public spotlight is on launch and lunar flight.