Now, for the first time, private companies are helping to drive space exploration.

With the number of U.S. spaceflights increasing, amidst efforts to return to the Moon and finally reach Mars, the U.S. Air Force has begun training C-17 Globemaster crews to assist in the recovery of returned astronauts.

"Last month, five pilots and three loadmasters from the 315 Airlift Wing, an Air Force Reserve C-17 unit based at Joint Base Charleston, S.C., traveled to Patrick Space Force Base, Fla., to learn [Human Space Flight Support mission] search and rescue airdrop techniques," Air and Space Magazine wrote last week. It noted that the purpose of the training was to help aircrews find and retrieve astronauts who returned to Earth, after their spacecrafts landed in the ocean.

The new C-17 training regimen speaks to the renewed promise of America's space exploration efforts -- and harkens to NASA's storied past, in which the U.S. military played an auxiliary but important role.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was created during the Cold War as a counter to Soviet space efforts. Accordingly, NASA was well funded and well-motivated. What followed was a flurry of world-changing innovation and productivity. Engaged in desperate competition with the Soviets, NASA launched men into space, walked in space, circled the globe, landed on the moon, established an International Space Station, and launched the Space Shuttle -- the most complex machine man has ever created.

But in the last few decades, NASA has largely drifted. With relatively paltry funding following the end of the Cold War, and without as clearly defined an objective, the renowned agency has seemed to have lost its focus -- becoming more of an afterthought, or a nostalgia piece, rather than an important agenda-setting group of innovators.

Now, for the first time, private companies are helping to drive space exploration. SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin are competing with one another and the result has been an uptick in spaceflights. NASA, for their part, has committed to returning to the moon, for the first time since 1972, with the Artemis program. The result: the U.S. military will need to be on standby, ready to assist in astronaut recovery.

The Human Space Flight Support (HSFS) mission began in 1959, with America's first manned spaceflight program, Project Mercury. Today, the air component of the U.S. Space Command "manages global contingency rescue forces during launches and landings for NASA's Commercial Crew Program (i.e. SpaceX and Boeing) and the upcoming Artemis missions," an Air Force spokesperson said.

The recovery efforts require coordination between NASA, the Navy, and the Air Force. The Air Force's C-17 crews are valuable for their ability to perform airdrops and due to their ability to fly long range missions.

"Our crews received training on search and rescue patterns that would assist in identifying the recovered capsule's location for the follow-on recovery," an Air Force spokesperson said. "Additionally, the mission set requires our loadmasters to utilize flares and smoke to assist in visually identifying the recovered capsule."

While just a handful of reservist C-17 crewmembers were trained last month in the HSFS mission, the expectation is that more C-17 crewmembers will be trained as spaceflights continue to increase, meaning the C-17 and her airmen should serve a vital function in America's return to the moon and her journey to Mars.