One of NASA’s most valuable assets is Southern Californians.
Following the space agency’s successful Artemis II mission around the moon last month, Victor Glover — who grew up primarily in the Inland Empire and has spent much of his career at several military and aerospace centers in Southern California — is now the only pilot to fly NASA’s Orion capsule.
As soon as the team completes it international victory lap in front of the mediaWith his head down, Glover is preparing to train the Artemis generation of astronauts to go to the Moon.
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“I think Artemis is going to demand we change the paradigm,” he told The Times.
The training program at the International Space Station, which has been continuously manned by a rotating crew of astronauts in low Earth orbit for more than 25 years, is “very worn out,” he said. But developing a new instructional regime for complex high-risk moon missions, as the agency tries to aggressively increase Artemis launches from once every 3 1/2 years to once every six months, is a different animal.
“Until we can really move forward and create a solid training program, I think astronauts need to take more ownership of the training and get involved so we can share this experience,” Glover said.
Till today, List of Artemis astronauts There are only four people tall. And there’s only one name on the list of Artemis pilots: Victor Glover.
Glover, 50, was born in Pomona, graduated from Ontario High School and lived in the urban sprawl of Southern California, including Baldwin Village (which he casually refers to by its name). Name before 1988“The Jungle”). He completed his undergraduate studies at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and received bachelor’s degrees (plural) from the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey and the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base.
He worked as a test pilot at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in Mojave. After NASA selected him as an astronaut, he learned to fly SpaceX’s Dragon capsule at the company’s then-headquarters in Hawthorne before boarding the ISS.
Glover especially remembers those test pilot days, pushing the limits of the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet at China Lake while completing his master’s degree.
“That was actually probably the best time of my career. We had our fourth daughter while we lived in China Lake,” he said. “I’ve been…working really hard but having a lot of fun with a house full of kids.”
In one of Glover’s favorite photos, taken by his wife, he is sitting at his desk in his tan desert flight suit, concentrating on graduate school work, with one of his daughters in his arms.
Glover sees himself as just one example of how the Golden State’s desert and coastal cities have left a lasting mark on America’s space program.
“Southern California is very uniquely positioned to help NASA,” Glover said. “Southern California has the combination of culture and technology – and being Hollywood doesn’t hurt” to help share NASA’s mission and values.
(Glover recalled his joy at seeing the “Iron Man” production crew, including actor and rapper Terrence Howard, hanging out at Edwards Air Force Base during his tenure.)
glover, who now lives in texas Near NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the company is focused on bringing that SoCal sensibility and the invaluable experience of piloting the Orion capsule to the agency’s astronaut training program.
When asked if he expected to fly on an Artemis mission again, he answered simply: “No.”
However, there was one more thing on his to-do list.
“Tell L.A. that I love them and all of Southern California – and I can’t wait to get back there and visit my home state and my hometown.”
