Victor Glover, a Christian astronaut and United States navy captain, is the pilot of the NASA’s Artemis II mission around the moon that is expected to be launched this Wednesday 1 April.

Glover previously served as a flight engineer on the International Space Station during Expedition 64, a 168-day 2020-21 mission, for which he brought a Bible and communion cups on board, and followed live-streamed worship services from his home church while orbiting the Earth.

“I want to use the abilities that God has given me to do my job well and support my crewmates and mission and NASA”, he said in an interview with the Christian Chronicle newspaper right before that expedition.

All Evangelical Focus news and opinion, on your WhatsApp.

During that mission, he posted quite a few photos on his social media, saying that what he saw from the spacecraft reminded him of what he read in the Bible.

 

 

 

 

Ver esta publicación en Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Una publicación compartida de Victor Glover (@astrovicglover)

Glover is a member of a Church of Christ, and he occasionally teaches Sunday school with his wife Dionna.

Gratitute and prayer

During the press conference at which he was announced as the pilot of the Artemis II mission, he thanked God “for this amazing opportunity”.

“I pray that God will bless this mission. But I also pray that we can continue to serve as a source of inspiration, for cooperation and peace, not just between nations but in our own nation”, added the astronaut.

The astronaut told Chistianity Today magazine that he “very intentionally” puts “God at the front”, because “it’s the way I try to live my life as well”.

“I know that God can use us for his purposes. When Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray, he used that very specific prayer that we all know, ‘Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name’ so, listen, I am a messenger of his kingdom; his will be done”, he said in the interview with CT.

Glover recalled that in the previous mission, her wife asked him if he was nervous before going on his first spacewalk and “I said no, I have truly done everything I can to prepare, including praying and reading my Bible”.

He also called on Christians worldwide to “pray for our crew, for the hardware. For the team all around the world that support this, and the hardest mission of all, the one our families are about to embark on”.

Artemis II mission

In addition to Glover, the crew includes commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialists Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

Glover, Koch and Hansen are the first black person, woman and Canadian, respectively, to participate in a mission like this.

It is the first time humans will travel that far into space since 1972.

The Artemis II, which is intended to orbit the moon and test navigation, communications and safety systems in preparation for future missions, will last around 10 days.

The crew will spend three full hours observing the moon, taking photographs and learning more about its geology.

The mission is similar to Apollo 8 (1968) and Apollo 10 (1969), which also circled the moon and paved the way for the more famous Apollo 11 mission that carried Neil Armstrong to the lunar surface.

If all goes well, the four astronauts will become the humans who have travelled the furthest from Earth. They will beat the record of 400,171 kilometres set by the Apollo 13 mission.

The fueling process for the Artemis II rocket has picked up speed. The rocket is now more quickly filling with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

When the core stage is completely full, it will contain 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen. pic.twitter.com/wejiCveeNb

— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) April 1, 2026