A former college football player is among the four astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission that will send its crew to the moon and back during a 10-day operation.
Victor Glover, 49, is the first Black astronaut to reach high orbit on a NASA launch, and if the operation is successful, he will also be the first to travel to the moon. (However, the Orion crew will not land on the moon as part of the mission.)
Glover wrestled and played defensive back at Cal Poly during the 1996 season before graduating in 1999 with a degree in general engineering. The Mustangs went 5-6 that year, but earned a 17-13 upset win over UC Davis, which was ranked No. 12 in Division II.
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The head coach at Cal Poly during Glover’s stint was Andre Patterson, most recently the defensive line coach with the New York Giants on Brian Daboll’s staff.
“He may not have been the fastest guy out there or the most athletic guy out there, but he was going to succeed since he was the best technician out there,” Patterson told the New York Times’ Timothy Bella. “That’s who he is at his core.”
NASA’s Artemis II mission began with the successful launch of the Space Launch System on Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Orion, the spacecraft carried above the earth by the SLS rocket, will orbit until the ship’s rockets are sufficiently charged to fire its engines. Glover will pilot the craft that sends its crew to the vicinity of the moon.
Glover was an aviator in the Navy and served in Iraq before being selected as an astronaut. In 2021, he was the first Black astronaut to serve on a full-duration International Space Station crew, piloting a Space X capsule in space.
While Glover is aware of his place in history, he prefers to take a wider view of what the Artemis II mission can accomplish as a part of human history.
“If you think about when we did this, the first time in Apollo, 1968, it was tough time in the country,” Glover said to the NY Times, referencing the assassinations of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
“And I hope that we can create a touch point for our generation that’s equal to or maybe there’s a path to be even greater than because it’s current and it’s ours,” he added.
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