Victor Glover

Victor Glover served as pilot of Artemis II, which launched on 1 April 2026 and splashed down on 10 April, making him the first Black astronaut to travel beyond low Earth orbit and the first to journey toward the Moon. At the post-flight press conference on 16 April he described the five seconds of parachute descent as "diving backward off a skyscraper".

Glover is a US Navy test pilot and NASA astronaut (class of 2013). He served as pilot on SpaceX Crew Dragon's first operational mission (Crew-1) in November 2020, spending 168 days aboard the ISS as part of Expedition 64. As Artemis II pilot he was second-in-command, responsible for spacecraft systems management and supporting Commander Wiseman through flight operations. He participated in the manual Proximity operations demonstration in which the crew flew Orion to within approximately 10 metres of the upper stage.

Glover's presence on Artemis II carries historic weight: he follows in a lineage from Mae Jemison and represents a deliberate broadening of who NASA sends beyond Earth. His completion of the mission positions him as a potential candidate for a future Artemis landing crew.