Above: Ben Nichols and Artemis II

Ben Nicholas received an important morsel of astronaut perspective at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas which stayed with him far beyond that day of training. Astronaut Christina Koch, Mission Specialist on the Artemis II, record holder for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit, reminded him, “The first faces that you see when you come back from space stay with you forever.” One of those faces would end up being Ben’s.

Ben’s journey to lead the recovery operation of the Artemis II astronauts and Integrity after they splashed down off the coast of San Diego started all the way back here in Cornwall Village. Ben attended Cornwall Consolidated School, chased soccer balls around town, and spent many summers on the Housatonic, helping his dad run the Housatonic Anglers, a fly fishing outfit he started in 1993. Ben said his parents, his family and friends created a very strong community for him, and supported him long after he left Cornwall to attend Northfield Mount Herman School in Massachusetts, spent some time at UConn, and graduated from the Naval Academy, playing soccer all the way through. 

Ben’s training for the Artemis II recovery mission had just begun, though. He was one of only 15 selected from a class of 1000 to go to EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) training in Panama City Beach, Florida. It was a high-risk, intensive joint-service program designed to prepare military personnel to detect, disarm, and dispose of conventional and unconventional explosive hazards, and included dive training at the Navy Diving and Salvage Training Center. He continued at Elgin Air Force Base, learning how to encounter and defuse underwater and on land explosives. After more underwater training, three months in Mississippi, jump school training in Georgia, and other deployments in many parts of the country, Europe and South America, he attached himself to SEAL Team 4 for a few years. He then received a permanent change of station, to lead a mobile diving and salvage company in San Diego.

All this experience was a warm up to the intensive two week training he received at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, equipped with a 40 foot deep, 6.2 million gallon pool for training astronauts and specialized recovery teams. Ben’s team practiced multiple scenarios for the Artemis II recovery, including nighttime and rough sea conditions. 

Ben’s mission began immediately after splashdown on Friday, April 10, 2026 at 5:07 PDT. His crew surrounded the Integrity, about 60 miles off San Diego’s coast, making sure the capsule was safe to approach. They swept the Integrity for hazardous gases, stabilized it with a flotation collar, and delivered a medical contingent to the astronauts to do an immediate preliminary health check. They then began setting up the “Front Porch,” a large raft to accept the astronauts after exiting the capsule where they would await helicopter transport to the USS John P. Murtha, anchored nearby. When the crew was safely on board the ship, Ben’s crew could focus on recovering the Integrity onto the USS Murtha as well. 

During the operation, Ben was so focused on his duties that he was not really able to reflect on the enormity and significance of events. Afterwards, however, when revisiting the Integrity to show friends, he had more time to step back and ponder his role in the historic space flight. But during the mission, one moment did give him pause. When he saw Christina emerge from the Integrity floating 20 yards away and she waved to him, he realized his was the friendly face greeting her back home to Earth. He got goose bumps. 

The Artemis II crew named their Orion capsule “Integrity” to represent the trust, teamwork, and dedication of the thousands of people involved in building and launching the mission. That same word describes the people who surrounded Ben growing up in Cornwall. The close community of Ben’s parents and friends, “the Elwell family, the Pryor family, the Morgan family, the Carlson family, I could go on. All of these families that I grew up with instilled great values of fellowship. A really good group of people that support one another and are there for one another, and have fun with one another. That in large part has made me who I am.” Not by coincidence, it also describes all the men and women who engineered the Artemis II mission from beginning to end. 

The faces Ben encountered early in life in Cornwall were as welcoming to him as the ones the Artemis astronauts saw upon returning from space. From the intimate community of Cornwall to the immense organization of the Artemis Program, NASA, and the US Navy, everyone accomplished their mission.

—Danny and Ben Lesch

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are Ben Nicholas’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of War or the US Navy.

📸: NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory