Two months after NASA astronaut and Artemis II pilot Victor Glover splashed down off the San Diego coast from a 10-day mission past the moon, he returned to the campus where his own journey began.
For Glover, the mission wasn’t just about reaching the far side of the moon. Despite joining a group of the fewer than 800 people in human history to experience spaceflight firsthand, he returned with a simple perspective: spaceflight isn’t about leaving the Earth, it’s about seeing it clearly.
“Earth is pretty amazing,” he told a group of reporters at a press conference before speaking at Cal Poly’s Performing Arts Center on June 15. “And you know what else is pretty amazing? Earthlings.”
From elementary-aged children in bedazzled space suits to senior community members who have kept up with Glover’s journey since his Navy pilot days, the audience was punningly over the moon to hear how he took off from Cal Poly into outer space.
Among the audience of nearly 1,300 were Glover’s wife and Cal Poly alum Dionna Glover and their daughters. Glover also honored his “blue and white” family, his fraternity brothers who attended the event from out of state, coincidentally scheduled right before the historically Black fraternity’s 42nd anniversary at Cal Poly.
“I am quite partial to the ‘and back,’” he joked with the audience about the event being called “Mustangs To The Moon And Back.”
“I mean if I had to choose only one, I would take the ‘and back.'”
Glover piloted the Artemis II mission in early April. The Artemis II mission is the first crewed Artemis mission aboard the Orion spacecraft, according to NASA.
The goal was to test the Orion spacecraft with people onboard and to capture images of the lunar far side. It is part of the Artemis program, which aims to explore the moon and progress towards an eventual goal of a crewed mission to Mars.
‘Hey babe, I love you from the moon’
On day six of the Artemis II mission in April, Glover famously sent a radio message to his wife Dionna saying, “Hey babe, I love you from the moon.” This became one of the most memorable moments online during the 10-day mission.
That message, however, began decades earlier at Cal Poly. Glover studied general engineering, graduating in 1999, and was both a wrestler and football player on Cal Poly’s teams.
Although Glover credited many Cal Poly experiences in preparing him to pilot the Artemis II crew 252,756 miles from Earth, his favorite memory from the university didn’t happen in the classroom, on the mat or on the field. It was meeting his wife, Dionna Glover.
The two met while tutoring for MESA, a program dedicated to supporting educationally- and economically-disadvantaged students succeed in calculus-based STEM fields. They drove across California in a Volkswagen van stuffed with popsicle sticks, mousetraps and science project to inspire K-12 students.
Glover called Dionna the “unsung hero” of his career, and recalled the grueling years of test pilot school when he would come home exhausted from flying, hand over their baby so she could rest, then return to graduate coursework.
“My gas tank was empty, but my heart was full.”
Victor Glover, on his early years of marriage
Glover’s student years
At Cal Poly, Glover balanced life as a dual-sport athlete and engineering student. One class nearly derailed him: Fluid Mechanics taught by Dr. James LoCascio — or to Glover, Jim.
He called it “the hardest class I’ve ever taken” — harder, he joked, than later studying, orbital mechanics and guidance, navigation and control as a NASA astronaut.
The first time he took the course, he failed it and said he “didn’t step up” and was “phoning it in” while balancing wrestling and football. When he retook it, he earned an A, a grade he said remains the most meaningful part of his academic career.
LoCascio, Glover recalled, poured countless hours into helping students succeed — even making ice cream for his classes — and inspired Glover to match that level of commitment.
While retaking the course, Glover frequented LoCascio’s office hours. LoCascio explained the purpose of an undergraduate education is not merely vocational training, but rather learning to analyze problems and synthesize solutions.
That lesson, he said, fundamentally changed how he approached every challenge afterward.
“You are not here to get training to get a job,” Glover recalled being told. “You’re here to learn to think.”
Based on his experiences, he affectionately called Cal Poly the “gym gem.”
“Gym a place you go to get stronger and get better and practice, but it’s like hard sweat like gym. But also gem, like a precious thing that there aren’t a whole lot of in the world. This place has always been both,” he said.
Progress is ‘bittersweet‘
At a press conference prior to the event, Mustang News asked Glover how he felt being a role model that many young students of color can see themselves in to make their career aspirations feel a little more possible.
Glover described his feelings on the matter as “multi-faceted.”
“It’s 2026 and I want us to just be able to say, ‘Look at all the people doing journalism and tech and entrepreneurship and public service,’” he said, emphasizing a “tension” between celebrating current progress and acknowledging that work remains.
He said his goal was never to be “a first” or to break records, but to fulfill a larger vision for representation. “What I really want to celebrate is the day when you see yourself in all things and it’s not novel.”
Glover quoted the late Carter G. Woodson, who famously said, “We need not negro history. We need to study the Negro in history. We need the history of the world void of bias.”
He said he was glad we’ve made progress, but ultimately, “we still have work to do.”
Later, during the event, Glover touched on the importance of community and visibility elsewhere, noting his fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma’s motto: “culture for service, service for humanity.”
That motto bled into Glover’s early years in the Navy and working at NASA after. He said he views his visibility as a “purpose” he is obligated to share.
“God has given me a purpose and and a passion and sharing is what I owe to you,” he said.
“I cannot hold this in and keep it to myself. I got to give it away. That’s the only purpose. Give it away. Give it away. Give it away.”
Victor Glover, on his purpose and passion
Glover hopes for a future where Black achievement is no longer viewed as exceptional, because history itself is no longer told through a biased lens. That hope, he said, extends beyond race.
“How many things on Earth make us feel human?” Glover asked. “We’re Indian and American and Malaysian and Black and white and men and women. There are so many things that want to chop us up and put us into these subcategories.”
From space, he said, we are all Earthlings.
“That’s probably why all of us are fascinated by space, because you look up into the nothing and you instantly love Earth, and you love Earthlings.”
For Glover, that perspective is the ultimate goal — not to erase people’s identities, but to remember that humanity exists before every label.
“And if we can get to that point, all that stuff we did to go to the moon was worth it,” he said.
“All of the cool things we were doing in space, when I looked 250,000 miles away and saw the Earth hanging there, it was clearly different than all of the other things. And at the end of it all, the goal is to get back to it. And that will always be for the foreseeable future.”
