Essex-class aircraft carrier and "Princeton" recovered the second crew to orbit the Moon, aboard Apollo 10, in May 1969. "Hornet" rejoined the program and recovered the astronauts from the first two moon landing missions, Apollo 11 in July 1969 and Apollo 12 in November. The first steps on Earth of returning astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins, are marked on her hangar deck, as part of her Apollo program exhibit. The three subsequent missions utilized amphibious assault ships as support vessels; however, "Ticonderoga" recovered the astronauts of the last two moon missions, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 in April and December
Hervé Stevenin Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO 16). In September 2013, Stevenin and ESA astronaut Jean-François Clervoy slipped into the roles of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for an underwater simulation test of Apollo 11 moonwalk tasks, organised by the Compagnie maritime d'expertises (COMEX) off the coast of Marseilles, France. They tested a COMEX-designed prototype training-spacesuit based on the Orlan adapted to simulate Moon gravity. Stevenin became an aquanaut through his participation in the NASA NEEMO 19 mission simulating undersea a space exploration mission aboard Aquarius, the world only undersea research laboratory with crewmates NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and