Victor Glover is going to the moon — and when he gets there, he'll be the first Black American to ever do it.
Glover is the pilot of NASA's Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center. The mission won't land on the lunar surface—it's a 10-day crewed flyby, looping around the moon and returning to Earth - but that doesn't make the moment any smaller. This is the first time humans have flown to the moon in over 50 years, and Glover is at the controls.
Who Is Victor Glover?
Glover is a Navy test pilot and former NASA astronaut who previously served as pilot on the SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station in 2020. He spent 168 days aboard the ISS on that mission, becoming the first Black astronaut to live there long-term.
Now he's doing it again — bigger. Artemis II carries four crew members: commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman on a lunar mission), and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American). It's a crew of firsts stacked on top of each other.
A Flyby, Not a Landing - But Still Historic
Artemis II is not Artemis III. There's no moon landing here. The mission follows a free-return trajectory, swinging around the far side of the moon before heading back to Earth. But being the pilot of the spacecraft that does it — navigating a crewed vehicle around the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972 — is its own legacy.
Glover has talked openly about what this means for representation. He's said he hopes young Black kids see him and understand that space isn't closed off to them — that the astronaut corps now looks like America. That's not a small thing.
The Bigger Picture
Artemis II is the proving ground for Artemis III, the mission currently targeting a lunar landing near the south pole, where NASA believes water ice exists in permanently shadowed craters. The commercial lander for that mission is being built by SpaceX.
Comments