Victor Glover is currently hurtling toward the moon at 25,000 miles per hour as part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, but before he was an astronaut, he was a defensive back for Cal Poly’s football team and a member of the Mustangs’ wrestling team.
Glover, 49, already made history as the first Black man to live for an extended period of time on the International Space Station in 2021. Now, he is set to become the first Black man to travel around the moon when Artemis II conducts its lunar flyby on Monday, April 6.
After graduating from Cal Poly in 1999, where he majored in general engineering as a two-sport athlete, Glover went on to join the U.S. Navy before earning a trio of advanced degrees in flight test engineering, systems engineering and military operational art and science. He became an astronaut in 2013 and made his first trip to space in 2021.
Cal Poly president Jeffrey Armstrong recalled in a story for The Athletic published Thursday, April 2 how Glover compared walking in space to his days as an athlete.
“The hardest thing that I’ve ever chosen to do in my life was walking in space,” Armstrong recalled Glover telling him. “The second-hardest thing that I ever chose to do in my life was wrestling practice with Lennis Cowell.”
Cowell, a “demanding” and “rewarding” coach, according to Glover, led Cal Poly’s wrestling program from 1985 to 2003. Glover’s football coach at the time, Andre Patterson, most recently served as the defensive line coach for the New York Giants.
“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 in March. “That’s who he is at his core.”
Glover discussed humans’ need for space exploration in a story published in The New York Times on Wednesday, April 1.
“It’s a part of being human,” he said. “We explore to learn about where we are, why we are, understanding the big questions about our place in the universe.”
Glover added that he is aware of the historical significance of the Artemis II mission.
“If you think about when we did this, the first time in Apollo, 1968, it was a tough time in the country,” he said. “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.”
NASA’s Artemis program was developed in 2017 to eventually return humans to the lunar surface, set up a permanent base on the moon and set the table for deep space exploration. The Artemis II mission, which launched on Wednesday, April 1, will take the four-person crew around the moon and back, marking the first time any humans have traveled that far since 1972.
