Ontario High graduate Victor Glover went aboard the International Space Station this week.
A commander in the U.S. Navy, Glover was accepted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as an astronaut in June 2013. After completing training as a member of Astronaut Group 21 in 2015, he succeeded in being designated as a member of the first commercial crew of astronauts to be sent into space.
Born in Pomona on April 30, 1976, Glover attended Ontario High School, where he was both a quarterback and running back for the Jaguars and a member of the wrestling team. He graduated in 1994, having been recognized as Ontario High’s athlete of the year. He attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo on a wrestling scholarship. He was a member of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, graduating with a bachelor of science degree in general engineering in 1999.
Glover joined the U.S. Navy, completing advanced flight training in 2001. He subsequently trained as a member of the Marine Fleet Replacement Squadron, flying the F/A-18C aircraft. He was deployed aboard the USS John F. Kennedy during Operation Iraqi Freedom after he was assigned in 2003 to Strike Fighter Squadron 34, stationed in Norfolk, Virginia.
After his tour in the Gulf of Oman aboard the USS John F. Kennedy came to an end, Glover was assigned by the Navy to some cross-service training as a student at the Air Force Test Pilot School. Upon his graduation in 2007, he was designated a test pilot, and served a stint with Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 31, based at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.
In 2011, Glover was given a billet as the department head for Strike-Fighter Squadron 195, stationed at the Naval Air Facility in Atsugi, Japan, and then deployed aboard the USS George Washington.
With the Navy, Glover flew 24 separate combat missions and made over 400 carrier landings.
In 2012 Glover went to work as a legislative fellow on the personal staff of Senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain. His connection to McCain assisted him in being selected in 2013 to be a member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Astronaut program.
Glover possesses three master’s degrees, one in flight test engineering, one in systems engineering, and one in military operation art and science. He is married to Dionna Odom Glover, with whom he has four children.
As part of the private sector’s first manned foray into space exploration, Glover was part of SpaceX’s flight carrying three others – physicist Shannon Walker, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and United States Space Force Colonel Michael Scott Hopkins – to the space station. SpaceX – an acronym for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation – is a transportation services company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk for the purpose of reducing space transportation costs, with the primary goal of enabling the eventual colonization of Mars. On Sunday, Glover, Walker, Noguchi and Hopkins, secured inside a SpaceX Dragon, a reusable cargo space capsule developed by Musk’s team of aerospace engineers, blasted off from Cape Canaveral by means of a Falcon rocket. After a flight that lasted 27-and-a-half hours, the crew docked with the international space station at 11:01 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday.
-Mark Gutglueck