John Glenn, first American in orbit, dies at 95

On February 20, 1962 Glenn flew the NASA mission Friendship 7, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth.

Thirty-six years later, at age 77, while still a sitting Senator, Glenn became the oldest person to travel into space.

“John Glenn is, and always will be, Ohio’s ultimate hometown hero, and his passing today is an occasion for all of us to grieve,” said Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich. “As we bow our heads and share our grief with his beloved wife, Annie, we must also turn to the skies, to salute his remarkable journeys and his long years of service to our state and nation.”

“Though he soared deep into space and to the heights of Capitol Hill, his heart never strayed from his steadfast Ohio roots. Godspeed, John Glenn!” Kasich said.

Glenn was born in Cambridge, Ohio and dropped out of engineering school at Muskingum College after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in order to enlist in the US Army Air Corps (now called the US Air Force). He then became an aviation cadet in the United States Marine Corps, where he flew 149 combat missions over the South Pacific in World War II and in Korea during the Koran War. After his military career, Glenn became a US Navy test pilot where he became the first to complete a supersonic transcontinental flight in 1957.

In 1958 Glenn participated in test flights for the newly created NASA Manned Space Program. In 1959 he was selected to be one of NASA’s ‘Original Seven’ astronauts as part of Project Mercury.

During the Friendship 7 mission, Glenn circled the Earth three times, becoming the third American in space, but the first to orbit the planet. He resigned from NASA in 1964, but returned to space in October 1998 as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery for a nine-day mission. At age 77, this flight made Glenn the oldest person in space. Glenn’s mission aboard space shuttle Discovery also marked the longest interval between space flights by the same person – 36 years.