Chad Copeland and Teammate support Crew 10 Recovery efforts in the Pacific

Chad Copeland, Program Manager and COMET Air Operations Lead, led his team in the successful recovery of the Crew 10 Dragon capsule off the coast of San Diego on August 9, 2025. 

“We had a great trip to San Diego,” said Chad.  “There were several delays for the landing due to weather, but we persevered and were successful.  NASA was very happy we could use the Crew 10 recovery as an EGS [Exploration Ground Systems] training exercise for Artemis II.” 

The four members of Crew-10 made a successful water landing off the coast of California Saturday morning, with splashdown taking place as scheduled at 11:33 a.m. EDT.  Crews on the SpaceX recovery ship MV Shannon successfully lifted the Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, aboard the ship. 

One of the goals of this exercise for Chad and his teammate was the integration of contractors, NASA, SpaceX, DoD, and the USN helicopter squadron, HSC-23.  

“HSC-23 is the Navy helicopter squadron that is partnered with NASA for the Artemis II recovery,” Chad said.  “This training exercise was to test the integrated capability of NASA Air Ops and the US Navy helicopters for day and night recoveries.   

“We captured the capsule with the Infrared camera first at about 200,000 feet at a speed of Mach 20; an excellent learning opportunity.” – Chad Copeland 

Aerodyne’s Randy Nash (second from right) and Chad Copeland (far right) support recovery of the Crew 10 Dragon capsule.  Randy was critical in the development of interception trajectories.

The Crew 10 Dragon capsule’s return to Earth as viewed from the US Navy MH-60 helicopter at 9,000 feet in the air using the Gyro-Stabilized System (GSS) Camera.