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    Navy doctor who led the recovery at Artemis II splashdown recounts experience welcoming home astronauts
    • April 16, 2026

    As he pried open the Integrity capsule’s hatch, the first thing Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jesse Wang heard were the screams of the Artemis II crew.

    Joy at the end of a successful mission.

    “They were so excited to have the hatch open and breathe real air again and see people outside,” Wang, 36, an undersea medical officer and a board-certified emergency medicine specialist, said of the crew at the end of their historic 10-day mission around the moon. “They were so relieved to be back. The mood was ecstatic.”

    Wang, a native of Laguna Beach, and his team of three medical divers were the first to speak with the astronauts and ensure they were healthy and fit to be offloaded.

    Though his training started more than a year ago, anticipation hit its peak as Wang and others on the recovery mission waited on the water and in the air off San Diego for the Artemis II crew to appear above.

    “We were all looking around the sky trying to find the capsule when we heard two rapid succession loud booms,” Wang said. “Several seconds later, someone in the boat yelled, ‘THE CAPSULE,’ and pointed. We saw the chutes open and watched it slowly descend to the water.”

    • NASA astronauts, from left, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Canadian Space...

      NASA astronauts, from left, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman pose for a photo before transiting to the amphibious transport dock ship USS John P. Murtha, April 10, 2026. (Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class David Rowe)

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    NASA astronauts, from left, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman pose for a photo before transiting to the amphibious transport dock ship USS John P. Murtha, April 10, 2026. (Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class David Rowe)

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    Wang oozed pride Thursday, April 16, in a call with reporters, speaking about the role he and his undersea medical dive team played in the recovery of the four astronauts after their splashdown.

    The four were the first for the U.S. in more than 50 years since the Apollo missions to make the journey to the moon. And Wang was there to meet them on their picture-perfect return to Earth.

    “I was lucky to be at the right time and place to be tasked with this mission,” Wang said as he described the lengthy and highly involved training he and his fellow divers underwent in preparation to recover the crew.

    “It was very important for me that I received the trust and support from NASA and the United States to care for the astronauts on their return to Earth,” he added. “I’m very proud to serve.”

    All the training paid off on April 10, when Wang and his team heard the booms signaling that the Integrity was speeding through the Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 35 times the speed of sound. The recovery team waited for go-time in a small, inflatable boat as the capsule drifted down with the help of several sets of parachutes.

    Just as NASA predicted, the craft splashed down at 5:07 p.m.

    Wang’s four-person team wasn’t alone. Out in the Pacific Ocean, Navy corpsmen, doctors and other first-responders on ships and in airplanes were on hand should something unexpected happen. They had trained for the worst scenarios and expected the best.

    “We were fully prepared for anything, and I’m so thankful it wasn’t required,” Wang said.

    Preparation for the recovery was extensive, with medical assistance waiting in the water near the capsule and two surgical teams set up on a ship nearby. Search-and-rescue corpsmen were overhead, with a hovering helicopter squadron.

    Wang’s team from the San Diego-based Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 1 included Navy hospital corpsmen Senior Chief Petty Officer Laddy Aldridge, Chief Petty Officer Vlad Link and Petty Officer 1st Class Steve Kapala.

    Typically, the group’s mission is to care for and ensure service members are safe to conduct diving operations. Their Artemis II training made them experts in decompression illnesses and other undersea medical considerations.

    Once Wang hoisted himself into the Integrity, as it bobbed in the waves, it hit him that the craft had just finished circling the moon, he said. Simply looking at the engineering behind it was “just incredible,” he said.

    “It obviously had an outward appearance of falling through the atmosphere and going multiple times the speed of sound,” he said. “Inside the capsule, you could tell everything was very well thought out and placed.”

    The Artemis II crew, retired Navy Capt. Reid Wiseman, retired Navy Capt. Victor Glover, a Pomona native, Canadian astronaut and former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronaut and mission specialist Christina Koch, had blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on April 1 for the 10-day fly-by mission to the moon.

    The trip, NASA officials said, was the farthest distance from Earth, at 252,756 miles, that any human has gone. The crew came within 4,067 miles of the lunar surface before turning for home.

    Wang and team were cleared to approach the capsule after divers in special safety gear checked it for hazardous gases. Wang was first to enter and was assigned to Koch.

    His job was to do an initial exam, provide any triage care needed, and then he helped her to an inflatable boat that had been attached outside the craft by Navy divers. Wang and his team then prepared the crew for airlift by Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23 back to the amphibious transport dock USS John P. Murtha for follow-on evaluations.

    For Wang, the experience and his place in history haven’t fully sunk in, he said. He’s back this week to his rounds as an emergency doctor at the naval hospital in Balboa.

    “I don’t think that it’s hit me yet,” he said. “I feel that I played a small part, but a highly publicized part. There were so many people behind the scenes that made it possible. I was just humbled to do my job.”

    Wang said his military service was inspired by his grandfather, who served in the Marines and in the Battle of Okinawa in World War II.

    “His stories drove a passion for me to join the military and serve,” Wang said, adding that, like himself, his grandfather was a native of the small, tight-knit town of Laguna Beach.

    Additionally, he said that his father, a Chinese immigrant, also helped fuel his passion and commitment to patriotism. His mother, he said, is a many-generations member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

    “My father has a sense of patriotism that doesn’t come taken for granted,” he said. “Not that others have patriotism taken for granted, but his unique experience being so proud to be a successful immigrant for his nation that gave him the opportunities to succeed in life that he wouldn’t have had otherwise, trickled down to my upbringing and was a driving force to my joining the military.”

    With that fueling his soul and his desire for adventure, Wang said his experiences growing up around the ocean made him think of the Navy as his best option.

    “I spent my entire formative years surfing and swimming, diving in Laguna,” he said. “It was an easy choice. Being comfortable in the ocean made it even more obvious that I wanted to become a dive medical and undersea medical officer, which is a very small branch within the Navy’s medical community.”

    He also credits the educational support and opportunities he had at Laguna Beach High, where he graduated in the Class of 2008.

    “It was a very blessed opportunity that set me up for success,” he said, giving a shout-out to two teachers there, Michael Roche, who taught English and was the school’s athletic director, and Walter Hamera, who also taught English and math. Wang said the teachers played a pivotal role in his education and inspired him to pursue his dreams.

    Wang went to undergraduate school at UC Irvine, then St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada. He completed a four-year emergency medicine residency at Lincoln Hospital in New York City’s South Bronx.

    He joined the Navy in 2021. Wang did his “green time” with the Marines at the 1st Medical Battalion at Camp Pendleton, then attended Undersea Medical Officer School in Panama City, Florida, and joined the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group I on Coronado Island.

    Among those who have followed Wang’s career is his longtime Laguna Beach friend, Austin Derry, with whom Wang spent years freediving and spearfishing off Laguna Beach and Baja, Mexico. Derry said he knew, while watching coverage of the Artemis II splashdown, that his friend was out there and among the first at the capsule.

    He remembers Wang’s pride in his father’s success and in his grandfather’s service.

    “We’re patriotic Americans, so it was cool to see him follow that path toward the military,” Derry said.

    And, as he watched Wang on TV during the splashdown, Derry said he knew his buddy had it handled.

    “Having spent a lot of time in the water with him over the last 20-plus years, I had full faith he would maintain control of the situation and act accordingly in case of unexpected challenges,” Derry said.

    Now a sport fisherman in San Diego, Derry said he hasn’t had the opportunity to speak to Wang yet, but hopes to soon.

    When he does, he’ll tell him, “Way to go, brother. Epic work!”

    ​ Orange County Register 

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