NASA on Future of Manual Control in Spaceflight

‘The state of technology is where it is, and we’re not going to undo all of that,’ Artemis II Pilot Victor Glover said.

Artemis II Pilot Victor Glover (2nd R) speaks to members of the media with his crewmates Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency (L), and fellow NASA astronauts Christina Koch (2nd L), and Reid Wiseman (R) at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on Jan. 17, 2026. T.J. Muscaro/The Epoch Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—NASA Astronaut Victor Glover will be the first person to manually fly the Orion spacecraft when he and his crewmates launch their Artemis II mission.

The two demonstrations planned at the beginning and end of his 10-day flight would put him in league with Apollo astronauts who manually controlled a spacecraft built to take humanity to the moon and back. But the manual element of today’s Artemis program—and any future space activities—will remain on some level but change due to the continuing onset of advancing technologies and the execution of more and more complicated missions in deep space.