Meet the Navy sailors who will be the first to greet returning Artemis II astronauts

After a 10-day space journey around the moon, the Artemis II team will splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday night and be met by a team of U.S. Navy sailors, ready to give them a warm welcome home. The first face that the four-person crew will see when they return to Earth will be Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman Laddy Aldridge, who will be the first of his team to open the Artemis II capsule, enter it and begin medical assessments, according to a Thursday release . Aldridge, who comes from three generations of military service and is assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Expeditionary Support Unit 1, will be among a four-person Navy dive medical team that will greet the astronauts and their Orion capsule to make initial medical assessments and safely escort them out of the capsule, per the release. “This effort is the culmination of both our training to bring world class care to the Artemis II crew and countless dedicated years of Navy diving and Navy medicine,” Aldridge said in the statement. The dive team that will assess the NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover consists of Aldridge, Lt. Cmdr. Jesse Wang, Chief Hospital Corpsman Vlad Link and Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Steve Kapala. Navy dive medical personnel often work in expeditionary warfare communities, according to the release, and they are certified divers that undergo specialized training to make them experts in undersea medical issues, such as decompression illnesses.…