He said he's now living out that once-denied dream vicariously through Victor Glover, who is set to make history on the Artemis 2 Moon mission that could take off as soon as Wednesday.
Glover is a 49-year-old veteran astronaut set to become the first Black person -- and first person of color -- to embark on a lunar voyage.
For Dwight, the achievement is personal.
The 92-year-old paved the way for diversifying the astronaut corps more than half-a-century ago, and later served as a mentor to Glover.
"I have a personal attachment and affiliation with Victor, because I met him when he was 15 years old, and we had a program where we were trying to encourage young Black candidates to go to pilot training and to get into flying," Dwight said.
"And never in a thousand years did I ever think that Victor would take it to heart and take it to the Moon, which is what he's done," the pioneering astronaut told AFP.
"I'm really living my old 92 years through Victor -- I'm really proud."
- Racist backlash -
In 1961, the civil rights movement was intensifying across the United States as Dwight was serving as a pilot in the US Air Force.
He was invited to join a training program that would set him up to become the nation's first Black astronaut.
Dwight says that it wasn't until later in his career that he understood that President John F. Kennedy at the time was seeking to garner Black support, and that "it was proposed to him that if he were to appoint a Black astronaut, it would ensure him the Black vote."
The move immediately sparked fierce backlash.
"The people who make astronauts fought it and said 'This guy will last about six weeks,'" Dwight recalls. "It was so crazy, all the stuff that I went through and had to face, all that criticism that Black people were too ignorant and ill-equipped."
But he held his ground: "I ended up ranked higher in the class than 10 white guys."
But in 1963, JFK was assassinated in Dallas -- a tragedy that marked the end of Dwight's spaceflight dreams.
He was repeatedly told that America wasn't ready for a Black astronaut, and that he'd arrived "20 years too early."
It wasn't until 1983 that NASA flew its first African American astronaut, Guion Bluford.
The historic journey took place three years after the Soviet Union sent the first person of color into space, the Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez.
And in 2024, Dwight finally made it to space aboard a suborbital space tourism flight operated by Blue Origin, the private space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
- 'American hero' -
The astronaut corps has become far more diverse since Dwight's era.
But the upcoming journey of both Glover and Christina Koch -- who is set to become the first woman to embark on a lunar mission -- mark significant achievements.
The milestones contrast with the Donald Trump administration's repeated attacks on diversity policies.
Since the Republican's return to power and subsequent executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion terminology, NASA has scrubbed its public commitment to send the first woman and first person of color to the lunar surface in missions to come.
That's cast doubt on what crews for the next phases of Artemis will look like.
The president's efforts have also taken aim at content displayed in museums -- a move critics denounce as revisionist history.
"I feel badly about and very disappointed in America," Dwight said.
"What kind of country have we become that we would elect some person that would take and nullify all the contributions, and the wonderful contributions, if you will, that Blacks and women have made to this story and throw it away?"
"Trying to erase all this history is an absolute tragedy," he added.
But the eternal optimist said he draws strength from the example set by Glover: "He's a natural American hero, in my opinion."
Glover, Dwight said, will "be up here in in the Neil Armstrong territory of people of great accomplishments."
"He's done it all, and they can't take that away from him."
'A very big deal': Canadian astronaut reflects on historic Moon mission
Cape Canaveral (AFP) Mar 31, 2026 -
As soon as Wednesday, NASA is poised to make history -- sending the first woman, the first person of color, and the first non-American on a voyage around the Moon.
Canadian Jeremy Hansen is among the four-person crew, what astronaut and fellow countryman Joshua Kutryk called "a very big deal."
Wearing a traditional royal-blue flight suit, Kutryk -- who is currently training for his own mission to the International Space Station -- made the trip to Florida's Kennedy Space Center to cheer on his colleague, who could take off as early as April 1.
In an interview with AFP, Kutryk discusses the significance of this new chapter of American space exploration:
- How do you feel ahead of this mission? -
It is a huge deal. It's the first -- not just the first Canadian lunar mission -- it's the first mission in the world that isn't purely a US crew.
So, it's a very big deal in Canada. I feel very excited, very proud.
Jeremy is a great friend and a great astronaut and a great ambassador to Canada, and I'm just excited to see him go do this.
- Why does this launch matter for Canadians? -
It's not a coincidence that Canada was invited to participate in this mission. It's because of what we've done in Canada that is valued by NASA, and that's something that makes me excited, but even more so proud to be from Canada right now.
Canada has been partnered with the United States throughout most of human space exploration. We started back with the Space Shuttle Program. We had astronauts flying in the 80s... We helped to construct the space station. We designed and built the suite of robotic systems that still operates a space station, even as you and I speak today.
Particularly with Artemis though, we were the first country to join the United States in this vision of going back to the Moon.
Now there are many countries in the Artemis Accords -- Canada was the first. And we contribute, or rather, we committed to contributing technology to help these missions take place.
And we've committed to developing robotics technology, to developing lunar rovers that are going to help explore the surface.
- Why should we return to the Moon? -
There's a lot of things in the world right now -- more than enough -- to leave people, myself included, feeling pessimistic about things.
This leaves me optimistic... it shows us that we can still do this stuff, the really hard stuff.
We can still do it together -- Canada, working with the United States, international cooperation -- and we haven't backed down from doing the really hard, next to impossible things, which are going back to the Moon.
That's really cool as an astronaut, to think that I have a friend who's going to go around the far side of the Moon.
But it's more than just cool. It's important for us. It's important for societies. It's important for Canada. It's important for our future, because this is how we get better.
It's how we advance and develop new technologies, make new scientific discoveries that chart a better course for us going forward.
And so for me, space is opportunity, and missions like this make me optimistic.
- What's different about the Artemis mission? -
What we're trying to do, technology wise, is very different.
The Apollo program was designed to send small crews there for short periods of time and bring them back, and not really to do anything there.
The whole mission with Artemis is sustained, permanent exploration and presence.
If you think about what we do in low Earth orbit now, we have humans working from all over the world together for long periods -- six, seven, eight, 12 months at a time -- that's what I'm getting ready to go do.
We want to do that on the surface of the Moon. That's what Artemis is about, and that's something that we couldn't have done during Apollo because we didn't have the technology to do it.
Another difference that I think is worth pointing out is that Apollo was just the United States, for good reasons at the time.
But Artemis is entire collaboration of dozens of countries from around the world -- and it's an important difference from that point of view.
Artemis 2 Moon mission: a primer
Kennedy Space Center, United States (AFP) April 1, 2026 -
NASA's Artemis 2 mission is set to be the first crewed flyby of the Moon in more than half a century, and could launch as soon as Wednesday.
Here is what to know about the highly anticipated mission that will usher in a new chapter of space exploration:
- The goal -
Artemis is the legacy of initiatives launched in the 2000s to succeed the American space shuttles. Those efforts survived several presidencies until President Donald Trump officially established the program during his first White House term.
It aims to return Americans to the Moon to establish a long-term presence there and pave the way for eventual missions to Mars.
The coming mission is intended to last approximately 10 days, and will mark the first crewed Artemis flight.
The second phase follows the Artemis 1 mission of 2022, when an uncrewed spacecraft flew around the Moon.
NASA intends to now verify that both that spacecraft and the rocket are in working order before attempting a lunar landing, a milestone now scheduled for the Artemis 4 mission in 2028.
Unlike in the Apollo program, the US spaceflight effort that landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969, NASA this time is collaborating both with private industry and other countries, notably in Europe.
This includes SpaceX and Blue Origin, rival companies founded respectively by the billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, which are tasked with developing lunar landers.
- The team -
Four astronauts -- three Americans and one Canadian -- will take flight in this major mission.
Reid Wiseman, a 50-year-old former naval aviator and test pilot who was also a deputy chief of NASA's astronaut office, will be in command.
Victor Glover, 49, also served in the US Navy. He will pilot the spacecraft while also becoming the first Black man -- and first non-white person -- to travel to the Moon.
And engineer-by-training Christina Koch, 47, will become the first woman to participate in a lunar mission.
Canadian Jeremy Hansen, a 50-year-old former fighter pilot, will become the first non-American to fly around the Moon.
- The countdown begins-
The crew will fly aboard the Orion spacecraft, perched atop NASA's powerful SLS rocket.
The orange-and-white rocket stands 98 meters (321 feet) tall, approximately 10 meters shorter than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket.
It will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The planned trajectory is hyper-precise, and can take place only during very specific time periods.
- The trajectory -
After liftoff, the team will not immediately head towards the Moon, instead entering orbit around Earth.
During this time the astronauts will conduct various checks to ensure the reliability and safety of the spacecraft -- it has never carried humans before -- before venturing further.
They will also test its manual piloting capabilities during docking simulations.
If all trials are successful, Orion will then provide the necessary thrust to leave Earth's orbit and head to the Moon.
For several days, the astronauts will conduct additional tests and experiments while en route.
Once they reach the Moon they will fly over its far side.
At this moment communications with Earth will be interrupted: the four astronauts are expected to become the human beings who have traveled farthest from Earth, breaking the Apollo 13 record.
Their observations should help NASA choose a landing site for Artemis 4, which will venture to the Moon's south pole, where no human has ever been.
- The return -
Artemis 2 will then follow a so-called "free-return" trajectory, designed to use the Moon's gravity to send it back towards Earth without propulsion.
This part of the journey will last approximately three or four days, punctuated by re-entry into the atmosphere -- one of the mission's most delicate maneuvers.
During Artemis 1, the heat shield protecting the spacecraft eroded in unexpected ways, according to a NASA technical report.
The agency has adjusted the spacecraft's trajectory so that the angle of re-entry into the atmosphere should be slightly less severe for the shield.
Once that stage is complete, parachutes will slow the spacecraft before it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
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