A NASA astronaut set to pilot a manned mission to the moon next year paid a visit to his alma mater Wednesday.

Cal Poly alumnus and Artemis II moon mission pilot Victor Glover returned to San Luis Obispo to visit students in the university’s aerospace, engineering and science programs as part of a “Learn by Doing” day on campus.

The 1999 engineering graduate previously served as a pilot on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1, which returned to Earth on May 2, 2021, after a 168-day expedition in space aboard the International Space Station.

Glover, 48, started his journey to the stars in Cal Poly’s engineering program, after which he joined the Navy and served as a test pilot before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013.

No stranger to public appearances at Cal Poly, Glover said he’s always happy to return to the university where he has three daughters enrolled and a fourth expected to be soon.

“I got to see a rover design senior project today, I got to see an exercise device — I could have been sitting in a room with NASA engineers, that’s the caliber of our students,” Glover told The Tribune. “I love being a part of this and just encouraging our folks to keep doing what they’re doing.”

Student autonomous plane project impresses NASA astronaut

As part of his afternoon visit, Glover met with a team of four seniors working with school’s Design, Build, Fly club to check out their latest project — an 11-foot autonomous research plane — and gave the students some pointers on everything from where to remove weight and reduce drag on the craft to what it takes to be a good team leader.

The club’s prototype plane should be capable of autonomous takeoffs, landings and flights using a combination of sensors and computer programming that allow for real-time adjustments to the environmental conditions of the flight, project member Andrew Sugamele said.

Currently, the club is preparing the craft for an upcoming senior project expo Friday, Sugamele said.

Though initial prototyping started in September, the full craft was assembled by the four team members across the past two weeks.

The craft has a few issues to work out before it’s ready for flight related to weight and material composition, Sugamele said.

As a former Navy test pilot, Glover was able to offer feedback on how to best shift the craft’s center of gravity and lower the overall weight to make it flight-ready.

As part of his own studies at the United States Naval Test Pilot School, Glover said he worked on a design project on improving surface stability and drag derivatives for gliders used in the autonomous exploration of other planets.

“This is stuff that NASA is tackling right now — I don’t know if you’ve been following along with what we do on Mars, but this is the new hotness,” Glover said. “This is stuff that we’re actively trying to figure out and thinking about ways to make these things fly and also respond to the environment.”

Glover said if fourth year students such as project members Sugamele, Andrew Whitacre, Cole Bushur and Nicholas Toal continue their research on in-demand projects such as autonomous aviation, there will be no shortage of places to take their talents post-graduation.

“Whether it’s going down in Southern California and the aerospace industry, cutting your teeth as an engineer or going off and becoming a pilot, there’s a lot of roads that lead to NASA and exploration,” Glover said. “There are new ways to go to space and will continue to be new ways with some of the amazing things that companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Jared Isaacman and his Polaris program are doing.”