Plano East graduate helps recover Artemis II crew after Pacific landing

Plano East Senior High School graduate Daniel Olson helped bring home NASA’s Artemis II crew after the spacecraft splashed down off San Diego, a role that tied a Collin County classroom to one of the most visible missions in U.S. spaceflight.

Olson, who graduated from Plano East in 2020 and joined the Navy in 2025, served as an aviation electrician’s mate with Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23. His job was to make sure the helicopter’s electrical systems were working during the recovery operation, part of the effort to bring astronauts safely back after their Pacific landing.

NASA said Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down at 8:07 p.m. EDT on April 10, 2026, off the coast of San Diego after nearly 10 days in space. At its farthest point, Artemis II traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, a reminder of how far this mission reached and how much depended on the recovery teams waiting in the Pacific.

The U.S. Navy said the USS John P. Murtha served as the primary recovery ship, working with NASA and U.S. Space Command to secure the Orion capsule and its four-person crew. Sailors brought the capsule aboard in the ship’s well deck after a highly choreographed recovery that involved divers, rafts and helicopter lift operations. The Navy described Artemis II as the first time humans journeyed to deep space in more than 50 years.

For Olson, the assignment marked a first. WFAA reported that the splashdown recovery was his first mission, and NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth said he described hearing the sonic boom as surreal and jaw-dropping. Plano Independent School District said Olson wanted to have stories he could pass down to his family, a detail that gives his service a personal weight far beyond the uniform.

The story carries a local meaning that reaches past the military and into the school system that shaped him. A Plano East graduate who once walked the halls of a Plano ISD campus is now part of a mission NASA and the Navy framed as a milestone for the next era of human spaceflight, with eventual Moon landings and Mars missions in view. For Collin County families, it is a direct line from a neighborhood school to a national achievement that was watched around the world.