John Glenn (1921 - ) was the first American to orbit the earth, aboard the third piloted flight of the Mercury program. He also became the oldest person ever to go into space when he rode aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998.

As a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, he flew 149 combat missions in World War II (1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953). In 1957 Glenn became the first person to make a nonstop supersonic (greater than the speed of sound) flight across the United States, setting a speed record of 3 hours 23 minutes 8.4 seconds on a trip from Los Angeles, California, to New York City.

In 1958 Glenn joined the group of U.S. military men competing for selection to become the first U.S. astronauts. NASA chose the first group of astronauts, including Glenn, in 1959. He was selected to fly aboard the third U.S. piloted spaceflight, which was the first piloted U.S. mission to orbit the earth. He and the other six Mercury astronauts trained intensively before their flights. On February 20, 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth in space, in the Mercury capsule Friendship 7. The three-orbit flight covered about 130,000 km (about 81,000 mi) in 4 hours 55 minutes.

At the end of the first orbit, the automatic control system of the Friendship 7 capsule began to stop functioning right. NASA engineers had planned to let Glenn take over control of the capsule during short test periods, but the malfunction forced Glenn to pilot the capsule manually during the second and third orbits and during reentry. The manual control system functioned flawlessly, so Glenn was able to continue with the flight. He took photographs from the capsule’s window, performed simple exercises and movements to test his body’s reaction to weightlessness, and made some scientific observations.

During Glenn’s second orbit, controllers on the ground discovered that the capsule’s heat shield, vital for reentry, had somehow come loose. The straps that held the rocket to the capsule were the only things holding the heat shield to the capsule. Engineers developed a plan to have Glenn keep the rocket attached to the capsule during reentry (normally the rocket would be jettisoned) and steer the capsule so that the pressure of the atmosphere against the capsule would hold the heat shield in place during the descent. Glenn’s reentry was the most difficult and stressful part of the mission, but the engineers’ plan worked, and Friendship 7 landed safely with a parachute in the Atlantic Ocean.

Throughout his career as a U.S. Senator, Glenn asked NASA to allow him to go back into space. In October 1998 at the age of 77, Glenn finally returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. This space shuttle mission included a study of the effects of space travel on aging humans.

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