THIS DAY IN HISTORY
AN AMERICAN ORBITS EARTH:
February 20, 1962
From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Hershel Glenn Jr. is successfully
launched
into space aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital
flight by an
American astronaut.Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine
Corps, was
among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration
(NASA) in 1959 to become America's first astronauts. A decorated pilot,
he flew
nearly 150 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War. In
1957, he
made the first nonstop supersonic flight across the United States,
flying from
Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes.Glenn was
preceded in
space by two Americans, Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Virgil I. "Gus"
Grissom, and two
Soviets, Yuri A. Gagarin and Gherman S. Titov. In April 1961, Gagarin
was the
first man in space, and his spacecraft Vostok 1 made a full orbit
before
returning to Earth. Less than one month later, Shepard was launched
into space
aboard Freedom 7 on a suborbital flight. In July, Grissom made another
brief
suborbital flight aboard Liberty Bell 7. In August, with the Americans
still
having failed to make an orbital flight, the Russians sprinted further
ahead in
the space race when Titov spent more than 25 hours in space aboard
Vostok 2,
making 17 orbits. As a technological power, the United States was
looking very
much second-rate compared with its Cold War adversary. If the Americans
wanted
to dispel this notion, they needed a multi-orbital flight before
another Soviet
space advance arrived.It was with this responsibility in mind that John
Glenn
lifted off from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral at 9:47 a.m. on
February 20,
1962. Some 100,000 spectators watched on the ground nearby and millions
more saw
it on television. After separating from its launching rocket, the
bell-shaped
Friendship 7 capsule entered into an orbit around Earth at a speed of
about
17,500 miles per hour. Smoothing into orbit, Glenn radioed back,
"Capsule is
turning around. Oh, that view is tremendous."During Friendship 7's
first orbit,
Glenn noticed what he described as small, glowing fireflies drifting by
the
capsule's tiny window. It was some time later that NASA mission control
determined that the sparks were crystallized water vapor released by
the
capsule's air-conditioning system. Before the end of the first orbit, a
more
serious problem occurred when Friendship 7's automatic control system
began to
malfunction, sending the capsule into erratic movements. At the end of
the
orbit, Glenn switched to manual control and regained command of the
craft.Toward
the end of Glenn's third and last orbit, mission control received a
mechanical
signal from the spacecraft indicating that the heat shield on the base
of the
capsule was possibly loose. Traveling at its immense speed, the capsule
would be
incinerated if the shield failed to absorb and dissipate the extremely
high
reentry temperatures. It was decided that the craft's retrorockets,
usually
jettisoned before reentry, would be left on in order to better secure
the heat
shield. Less than a minute later, Friendship 7 slammed into Earth's
atmosphere.During Glenn's fiery descent back to Earth, the straps
holding the
retrorockets gave way and flapped violently by his window as a shroud
of ions
caused by excessive friction enveloped the spacecraft, causing Glenn to
lose
radio contact with mission control. As mission control anxiously waited
for the
resumption of radio transmissions that would indicate Glenn's survival,
he
watched flaming chunks of retrorocket fly by his window. After four
minutes of
radio silence, Glenn's voice crackled through loudspeakers at mission
control,
and Friendship 7 splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. He was
picked up by
the USS destroyer Noa, and his first words upon stepping out of the
capsule and
onto the deck of the Noa were, "It was hot in there." He had spent
nearly five
hours in space.Glenn was hailed as a national hero, and on February 23
President
John F. Kennedy visited him at Cape Canaveral. He later addressed
Congress and
was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City.Out of a reluctance to
risk the
life of an astronaut as popular as Glenn, NASA essentially grounded the
"Clean
Marine" in the years after his historic flight. Frustrated with this
uncharacteristic lack of activity, Glenn turned to politics and in 1964
announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio
and
formally left NASA. Later that year, however, he withdrew his Senate
bid after
seriously injuring his inner ear in fall. In 1970, following a stint as
a Royal
Crown Cola executive, he ran for the Senate again but lost the
Democratic
nomination to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, he defeated
Metzenbaum, won
the general election, and went on to win reelection three times. In
1984, he
unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president.In early
1998,
NASA announced it had approved Glenn to serve as a payload specialist
on the
space shuttle Discovery. On October 29, 1998, nearly four decades after
his
famous orbital flight, the 77-year-old Glenn became the oldest human
ever to
travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a
NASA study
on health problems associated with aging. In 1999, he retired from his
U.S.
Senate seat after four consecutive terms in office, a record for the
state of
Ohio.
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