The [recovery] covers are the result of many hours and months in trying to pursue Artemis 1 official USS Portland ship cancels by Stephen Stein of CSM Enterprises, West Hartford, Connecticut, with associate/consultant Ken Havekotte of SpaceCoast Cover Service, Merritt Island, Florida.

Stein was able to make contact with the Command and Support Staff of COMEX Expeditionary Strike Force Three located at Naval Base San Diego, CA. This was the Naval unit that was responsible for handling the military-side of Orion's capsule recovery operations in the Pacific and on its return from sea at San Diego. The USS Portland, along with sister ships John P. Muir and Anchorage, were three of the six San Antonio-Class amphibious transport Landing Platform Docks (LPD) of ship types that the Navy wanted to support NASA's Artemis program and the Orion spacecraft recovery operations from a lunar return voyage. LPD-27, the USS Portland commissioned in Dec. 2017, was the chosen prime recovery vessel along with assistance from fellow US Navy ship, USS Montgomery (LCS-8).

The Navy personnel at Strike Force Three approved in having 290 covers, mainly of two cover types with 150 standard-size envelopes and 140 monarch size, on board the Artemis 1/Orion prime recovery ship. The cover project would not had been possible if it weren't for the cooperation and support of the command staff public affairs liaison office in conjunction with NASA.

Most all of the 290 covers received the official USS Portland ship's crest rubber stamp cachet in black ink. In addition, though, of the official ship's applied rubber stamp crest impression, there had been another rubber stamp used on many of the ship covers. It had been a privately-produced rubber stamp cachet, of which two were given to the ship and the USN base at San Diego well in-advance before Orion's return from the moon to help enhance the postmarked Dec. 11th covers.

The commemorative rubber stamp was designed by space artist Detlev van Ravenswaay of Bonn, Germany, also a long-time designer of U.S. Postal Service pictorial cancels for many space-related events since the 1980's.

Altogether, but while not confirmed, there may had been about 400 or more shipboard covers of all categories for Orion's splashdown and recovery by the USS Portland.