Godspeed, John Glenn
Sixty-three years ago, on February 20, 1962, Astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling the globe three times in the Friendship 7 spacecraft. To honor the legacy of this aeronautical feat, we take a closer look at Glenn’s life and career and the lead-up to this monumental mission.
Early Life and Career
Born in Cambridge, Ohio, in 1921, John Herschel Glenn, Jr., was looking to the skies at an early age. Young Glenn was fascinated by flight, building model airplanes and taking his first flight with his father when he was eight years old. While he was attending Muskingum College, Glenn earned a private pilot license and a physics course credit through the Civilian Pilot Training Program—a flight training program sponsored by the U.S. government to increase the number of civilian pilots.
When the United States entered World War II, Glenn quit college to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps. However, after the Army didn’t call him to duty, Glenn opted to enlist as a U.S. Navy aviation cadet in March 1942. Glenn attended the University of Iowa to participate in pre-flight training before going onto primary and advanced training at naval air stations. During this time, he accepted an offer to transfer to the U.S. Marine Corps and completed his flight training in March 1943. Glenn went on to serve as a Marine fighter pilot in both World War II and the Korean War, flying a total of 149 combat missions.
Reaching Supersonic Speeds
After the Korean War, Glenn became a test pilot in the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. In July 1957, while he was the project officer of the F8U Crusader (shown below), Glenn captured national attention by setting a transcontinental flight speed record from Los Angeles to New York. He flew across the country in three hours and 23 minutes, completing the first transcontinental flight at supersonic speed.
Ready for Liftoff!
One of the first initiatives of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) after it was established on October 1, 1958, was Project Mercury—the mission to safely and successfully launch an American into space and complete the first Earth orbit. Eager to take part, Glenn applied for a test pilot position at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, where he’d test spaceflight simulators and participate in research on re-entry vehicle shapes. Glenn also advised on the mock-up of the spacecraft that would eventually launch him into space.
Following a broad search among military test pilots, NASA identified Glenn as one of the “Mercury 7” or “Astronaut Group 1,” the seven astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury. Glenn was ultimately selected to man the Friendship 7 spacecraft. He lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on February 20, 1962.
Encased in a bulky, pressurized suit, strapped into a seat, and crammed into a tiny capsule, Glenn risked his life as he traveled at 17,500 miles per hour 160 miles above Earth. Fellow Mercury 7 astronaut Scott Carpenter hailed Glenn’s launch into space, saying, “Godspeed, John Glenn.” He returned to Earth five hours later after orbiting the Earth three times.
The successful completion of Glenn's mission helped to restore American prestige during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. In response to the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I in 1957, the United States quickly took action—including with the creation of NASA—to catch up to and eventually surpass Soviet advancements in space. John Glenn’s first orbit of the Earth and subsequent spaceflights by the Mercury 7 paved the way for the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, the first mission to land humans on the moon.
This wasn’t Glenn’s last time in space. In 1998, he became the oldest person to fly into space when he joined the STS-95 mission. The mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and lasted nearly nine days to deploy and retrieve the Spartan satellite, which studied the sun and solar wind, and to operate the Hubble Space Telescope.
Glenn's Legacy
After he retired from NASA, Glenn served from 1974 to 1999 as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and became an adjunct professor at Ohio State University. Considered a national hero, Glenn received numerous awards and distinctions, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Glenn died at 95 on December 8, 2016. His life and legacy continue to inspire many astronauts as they advance scientific discovery and explore the “new frontier.”
You can explore more space-related records preserved by the National Archives here.
