Nationwide — Artemis II pilot Victor Glover returned home to League City, Texas, where neighbors cheered his arrival. The NASA astronaut spoke briefly to the crowd after finishing a historic 10-day mission around the Moon.
Glover arrived on Monday and was greeted by residents gathered outside his neighborhood. He rode in a van with his window down, smiling and waving as people filmed and cheered his return.
When the van reached his driveway, Glover stepped out and took a moment to speak with neighbors. He urged the crowd to build stronger connections and treat each other with more care.
“Some of us have never met before, and you know whose fault that is? Ours. So, let’s choose to do this. Let’s be this more. Let’s be neighbors,” Glover said, according to NBC Los Angeles. “I don’t know if you heard me say it, but God told us to love him with all that we are and love our neighbors as ourselves,” he added, drawing cheers and applause.
Glover was born in Pomona, California, and studied at Ontario High School and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He became a NASA astronaut in 2013 and later flew on the SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station.
During the Artemis II mission, Glover flew with commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The crew returned on April 10 after a 10-day trip around the Moon.
The mission covered about 695,000 miles and marked several milestones, including Glover becoming the first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon. The crew also became the first humans to see the far side of the Moon with their own eyes.
After returning, Glover reflected on the experience and the bond formed by the crew. He said the journey felt too large to fully explain and spoke about gratitude and connection during public remarks.
“Even bigger than my challenge trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with — it’s too big to just be in one body,” Glover said at a press conference.