Victor Glover is the first African American pilot on both the First Operational Flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon, and Artemus II

Victor Glover is the first African American pilot on both the First Operational Flight of SpaceX Crew

Dragon, and Artemus II

As the world revels in the achievements of NASA’s Artemis II, let us acknowledge Victor Glover as the first African American pilot on both the First Operational Flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon, and Artemus II

The narrative below from NASA’s website revisits this feat.

Victor Jerome Glover is a NASA astronaut of the class of 2013.  He is the first African American pilot on the first operational flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. Glover is a commander in the U.S. Navy where he pilots an F/A-18. 

A graduate of the U.S. Navy academy, Glover received a Bachelor of Science degree from California Polytechnic State University.  He is a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. 

Navy Commander Glover became the first Black astronaut on a long-term space station mission.  The crew also included physicist Shannon Walker and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, who became the first person in almost 40 years to launch on three types of spacecraft. SpaceX has already launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on the first full-fledged taxi flight for NASA by a private company, Tesla. The flight lasted for a total of 27 1/2 hours and was entirely automated, although the crew could take control if needed. The three-men, one-woman crew named their capsule Resilience in homage to breakthroughs in facing the pandemic, and developments in social and political justice. Victor J. Glover, Jr. was selected as an astronaut in 2013 while serving as a Legislative Fellow in the United States Senate, NASA wrote. Born in Pomona, California, he is married to the former Dionna Odom of Berkeley, California. They have four children. (Associated Press)

In April 2026, Victor Glover  and three other astronauts made the trip to the moon and back, this time the trip was the furthest that any human has ever gone.  Artemis II is NASA’s first mission with crew aboard its foundational deep space rocket, the SLS (Space Launch System), The Orion spacecraft will confirm that all the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with crew aboard in the actual environment of deep space. The mission will pave the way for lunar surface missions, establishing long-term lunar science and exploration capabilities, and inspire the next generation of explorers.

Four astronauts were selected for NASA’s Artemis II mission: Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch from NASA, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency. Artemis II was NASA’s first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft around the Moon to verify the capabilities for humans to explore deep space and pave the way for long-term exploration and science on the lunar surface.

 The Artemis II crew is shown inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in front of their Orion crew module on Aug. 8, 2023. From left are Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist; Victor Glover, pilot; Reid Wiseman, commander; and Christina Hammock Koch, mission specialist. (NASA/Kim Shiflett)

The crew of four astronauts lifted off on the approximately 10-day mission from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, blazing beyond Earth’s grasp atop the agency’s mega Moon rocket. Over the course of about two days, they checked out Orion’s systems and performed a targeting demonstration test relatively close to Earth before then beginning the trek toward the Moon.

Glover said the most "striking" thing he had seen on this lunar flyby was  the moon's "terminator," the dividing line between its illuminated side and the side cloaked in darkness.

"Boy, I am loving the terminator," he radioed to Mission Control. "There's just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes. You'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It's just so visually captivating."

Glover added that he had spent the most time observing the terminator, thinking about it and describing it in his notes.

Victor Glover with his wife and children (Photo by Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Orion’s European-built service module gave the spacecraft the big push needed to break free from Earth’s  orbit and set course for the Moon. This trans-lunar injection “burn” sent the astronauts on an outbound trip of about four days, taking them around the far side of the Moon, where they ultimately created a figure eight extending more than 230,000 miles from Earth. At their max distance, the crew flew 4,600 miles beyond the Moon. During the approximate four-day return trip, the astronauts continued to evaluate the spacecraft’s systems.

Instead of requiring propulsion on the return, this fuel-efficient trajectory harnessed the Earth-Moon gravity field, ensuring that—after its trip around the far side of the Moon—Orion was pulled back naturally by Earth’s gravity for the free return portion of the mission.

The picture above shows how close the spaceship came to the moon. (Men's Journal)

 On April 7, the crew headed home after crew endured the high-speed, high-temperature reentry through the Earth’s atmosphere before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. They were met by a recovery team of NASA and Department of Defense personnel.

 The historic mission saw the four astronauts travel further from Earth than any human had ever gone [NASA]

The crew lost contact with the Earth, as expected, for 40 minutes as they travelled behind the Moon. With communications re-established, astronaut Christina Koch said: "It's so great to hear the Earth again." Soon afterwards the spacecraft dipped to within a few thousand miles of the lunar surface and the crew witnessed a total eclipse of the Sun as the Moon blocked out its light. The Artemis II mission's spacecraft, Orion, broke the record for human travel record of 248,655 miles (400,000km) held since 1970 by the Apollo 13 mission.

Canadian astronaut Jeremey Hansen acknowledged the achievement with humility.

"As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so, honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration," he said.

The spacecraft was not planning to land on the Moon but fly around its far side, the side which is never visible from Earth. Satellites have photographed the far side before, but the astronauts were the first human eyes to see some parts of the far side's surface and its vast craters and lava plains.

Commander Reid Wiseman Fellow astronaut Jeremy Hansen made a request to Nasa mission control to name two craters they observed on the Moon "both with our naked eye and with our long lens.” One they asked to be called Integrity - the name the astronauts gave to the Orion capsule in which they travelled; the other request was to commemorate Wiseman's late wife Carroll, who died in 2020 of cancer.

"A number of years ago we started this journey, and we lost a loved one and there's a feature on a really neat place on the moon... at certain times of the Moon's transit around Earth we will be able to see this from Earth," he said in a visibly emotional tribute.

Artwork: Orion emerges from the Moon's far side to a solar eclipse in space [NASA] 

Close up, the Moon stops being a shining disc and becomes a craggy world with varied features. [NASA]

Contributors to this article: Pallab Ghosh - Science Correspondent; Alison Francis - Senior Science Reporter; Kevin Church; and Esme Stallard