and Deke Slayton.Ī war hero and test pilot who earned fame even before he was named to the Mercury team, Glenn seemed to have the right stuff and more. The others were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard Jr. Glenn was the last surviving astronaut of the original Mercury 7 group. Glenn first earned broad public attention in 1962 in the bell-shaped space capsule Friendship 7 - a flight that NASA's mission control worried might burn up upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.Įpitomizing the fighter-jock pilot of few words mythologized in Tom Wolfe's “The Right Stuff,” Glenn exited the capsule smiling and jauntily walked across the awaiting aircraft carrier deck as if he had just returned from an errand. The second celebrated trip did nearly as much to revive interest in America's space program as his first pioneering voyage had to ignite the country's fascination in space exploration. To return to space on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1998, he sold himself as a human guinea pig who - at 77 - would demonstrate the effects of space travel on the elderly. In his first historic flight, Glenn circled the Earth in a tiny spaceship on Feb. “He leaves an undiminished legacy as one of the great people of our time.” “The Ohio State University community deeply mourns the loss of John Glenn, Ohio's consummate public servant and a true American hero,” Ohio State University President Michael Drake said in a statement. senator from Ohio, died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hospitalized for more than a week, said Hank Wilson, communications director for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University. Glenn, who also served for 24 years as a U.S. LOS ANGELES - John Glenn, who became a hero as the first American to orbit the Earth and then relived that glory 36 years later as the oldest man to go into space, died Thursday.
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